ABSTRACT
Drug policies have symbolic, ideological effects. But they also have immediate effects on the lives of the people who are directly exposed to them. This chapter will analyze some of the effects of the policies whose development has been traced in the previous two chapters. It will avoid generalizations about the effects of entire national drug policies (although they will be risked in the next chapter). Rather, it will be limited to analysing three specific areas of English drug policy that have been mentioned in previous chapters. They are the use of treatment to reduce crime; the continuing use of the criminal justice system as the main tool of drug policy; and the ambivalent policies on cannabis. This chapter will look at drug policy effects under each of these headings in turn, with a specific focus in the middle section on the differential impacts of drug law enforcement on people of Afro-Caribbean origin. It will argue that the material effects of drug policy deepen its discursive impact in justifying and reinforcing inequalities.
