Towards Drug Policy Justice

Damon Barrett is a senior lecturer in human rights at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is Co-Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, based at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. His work has focused on what it means to adopt a human rights-based approach to drugs, with a particular focus on the rights of the child. Rick Lines is Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Swansea University in Wales, where he is Co-Director of Global Drug Policy Observatory. He has been called ‘a key figure in the emerging field of human rights and drug policy’ and is Chair of the International Centre of Human Rights and Drug Policy at the University of Essex and author of Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law. In 2022, he joined Public Health Wales where he leads national policy, programming and research on drug use and harm reduction.

Introduction: Towards Drug Policy Justice

Damon Barrett and Rick Lines

Part I: The evolving drug policy space

Chapter 1: Towards Transformative Drug Policy Reform

Laura Garius, Imani Mason Jordan, Niamh Eastwood

Chapter 2: Drug Policy Reform and Human Rights Post-COVID-19

Kasia Malinowksa and Diederik Lohman

Chapter 3: Debunking the Three Myths About Reforming Asian Drug Policies

Michelle Miao and Gloria Lai

Part II: Tracking progress

Chapter 4: Lessons Learned from Legal Regulation of Cannabis

Zara Snapp, Jorge Herrera Valderrábano and Luis Daniel Santiago Vidargas

Chapter 5: The Regulation of Legal Drug Markets: Key Lessons from Alcohol Control Policy in Africa

Ediomo-Ubong E. Nelson and Isidore S. Obot

Chapter 6: Legal Epidemiology in Post-Prohibition Scenarios

Scott Burris, Corey S. Davis and Elizabeth Platt

Part III: Harm reduction in the changing landscape

Chapter 7: Harm Reduction Post-Prohibition

Naomi Burke-Shyne and Ajeng Larasati

Chapter 8: Can Darknet Drug Markets Be Harm Reducing? Building Decriminalised Spaces in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Eliza Kurcevič

Chapter 9: Prisoner to Patient: The Pathologisation of People Who Use Drugs

Shaun Shelly and Sonja Pasche

Part IV: Emerging rights issues at the supply side

Chapter 10: Peasants’ Rights after the War on Drugs: The Case for Transformative Cannabis Regulations

Alejandro Rodríguez, Isabel Pereira and Luis Felipe Cruz

Chapter 11: Are Coca Crops Causing Deforestation in Colombia? Would a Future Regulated Market Impact the Environment?

María Alejandra Vélez

Part V: Reckoning with the past

Chapter 12: Consensus Breakdown and Recalcitrancy in the Drug Control System – Towards Disintegration or Re-Integration?

John Collins

Chapter 13: The Last Drug Warrior in the West: UK Drug policy and shifting material interests from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century

Kojo Koram