ABSTRACT
The failure of prohibition to reduce availability and use of illegal drugs has encouraged adoption of more regulatory approaches. Legal regulation has long been applied to risky products such as alcohol. In this chapter, we draw lessons from alcohol policy for the regulation of currently illegal drugs. A number of measures are known on the basis of available scientific evidence to be effective in reducing alcohol harms. However, industry interference has continued to hamper the development and implementation of evidence-based national alcohol policies, especially in Africa. The main objective of legal regulation is to protect public health from commercial operators. Alcohol regulation has shown that this requires (1) keeping the industry away from the policymaking process, (2) developing a framework convention to govern product promotion and marketing, (3) political commitment from government at international, national and local levels, and (4) involvement of all stakeholders, including civil society actors. We emphasise that to realise the public health goals of regulation, there has to be commitment to develop, implement, monitor and update evidence-based policies to check the activities of commercial actors.
