ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the role of mainstream criminological theory in guiding the development of drug policies and programs and discusses how critical criminological theory and research could help to move drug policies and programs in a more positive and productive direction. While politics and values were clearly significant contributors to drug policy and practice decisions and actions throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and use of drugs formally declared to be harmful, undesirable, and offensive. The focus of mainstream criminology on the crime and the behavior of individual offenders was given new life by the creation of the Law Enforcement Administration by Presidential Commission in the US and the billions of dollars it made available for research specifically on crime as a problem. The attention of criminology and criminologists drifted away from a scientific quest for a better understanding and explanation of the causal context of crime and criminologists became technical assistants "to politicians bent on repressing crime".
