ABSTRACT
The debate on drugs is dominated by one, endlessly recurring argument. Should drugs be legal or prohibited? Proponents in these repetitive discussions often talk as if their position, if only it could be universally accepted, holds the golden key to a future where crime, addiction and drug-related deaths are vastly reduced. The vacuous slogan of the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs – ‘a drug-free world: we can do it’ – is countered by libertarian opponents of prohibition who make no less speculative claims about the benefits of allowing a free market in all psychoactive substances. As has often been noted (e.g. Currie 1993; Young 1971), these blinkered discussions close off consideration of the social issues that are at the root of many of the harms for which drugs and laws have been blamed. In this book, I will argue that these harms are deepened by inequality and that policy on drugs and crime plays a part in producing and reproducing inequality. If we were magically to achieve a drug-free world tomorrow, crime and illhealth would continue. And if a Jericho-like blast from a troop of legalizers could somehow bring the whole edifice of prohibition tumbling down, drugs would still be associated with unnecessary deaths and other harms. These harms would continue to be concentrated amongst the most vulnerable people who have been socially, economically and racially marginalized.
