ABSTRACT
This chapter explores lawyers’ and decision makers’ reflections on the ethics of existing legal approaches to alcohol and other drugs. Lawyers suggest that existing approaches to the practice of lawyering for people who use drugs are simultaneously beneficial and harmful, and that it can be implicated in the production of drug-related stigma, primarily through the enactment of the ‘addict’ as irrational and non-agentive. Lawyers raise concerns about the central emphasis placed on addiction in their work, and question whether different approaches might be possible. I also examine the views of decision makers on the utility of existing constructions of ‘addiction’.
