Drug Policy: A Multidisciplinary Approach

This timely book provides a rigorous multidisciplinary critique of the drug policy domain by exploring how illegal drugs have shaped societies, economies and geopolitical relationships for over a century. It argues that drug policy is too complex a domain for any single discipline to handle alone, and demonstrates the many benefits of more holistic approaches. By tracing the origins and political economy of the international drug control system across the twentieth century, this book meaningfully grounds current policy debates in wider historical context.

Contributing authors from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America move beyond the Anglo-American frameworks that have previously dominated drug policy scholarship to explore what their field has learned, where it has fallen short and what questions remain unanswered. Covering both supply and demand dimensions, the book addresses the full spectrum of drug control policy, from criminal organizations and retail drug markets, to tuberculosis prevention and compulsory treatment. It also engages with the most contested frontiers of the field, addressing the death penalty for drug offences, gender and patriarchy in Latin American drug policy, and the Mexican Supreme Court’s rights-based jurisprudence, reflecting the sharp edges of contemporary reform debates.

Drug Policy: A Multidisciplinary Approach serves as both a reference work and disciplinary map for scholars and students across criminology, public health, international relations, history and development studies. Policy practitioners and civil society organizations working on drug policy reform, harm reduction and human rights will also greatly benefit from its insights into global health and drug control research.