Drawing on the author’s participation in high-level policy discussions, this book presents three key issues in UK illicit drug policy – medical cannabis, drug-related deaths and the government’s 10-year drug strategy.

Government policy has steadfastly been against drug legalisation, but increasingly critics have argued that this is unsustainable. This book is a timely examination of the issues this raises. Numerous suggestions have been offered. Some seek complete legalisation, others a more modified form, yet still others want an increasing commitment to harm reduction policies. Philip Bean examines the implications of these proposals for individuals, especially juveniles, and for society, when set against crime reduction claims. He concludes with the necessary questions a rational drug policy must answer. The book will be essential reading for students and academics in criminology, sociology and social policy, as well as policy makers, practitioners and the general public.

How is UK drugs policy made, and why does it so often seem irrational when considering what works in reducing drug-related harms? This book explains how the concept of drug policy constellations – the loosely concerted policy actors with shared moral commitments that influenced policy outcomes – explains why there is no such thing as 'evidence-based' drug policy. Drawing on his participation in high-level policy discussions, and a novel approach to policy analysis, Stevens presents three recent cases involving key issues in UK illicit drug policy – medical cannabis, drug-related deaths and the government’s 10-year drug strategy.

By highlighting the degree to which meaning making in public policy is more a cultural struggle than a rational and analytical project, Governing Narratives brings public administration back into a political context. In Governing Narratives, Hugh T. Miller takes a narrative approach in conceptualizing the politics of public policy. In this approach, signs and ideographs—that is, constellations of images, feelings, values, and conceptualization—are woven into policy narratives through the use of story lines. For example, the ideograph “acid rain” is part of an environmental narrative that links dead trees to industrial air pollution. The struggle for meaning capture is a political struggle, most in evidence during times of change or when status quo practices are questioned. Public policy is often considered to be the end result of empirical studies, quantitative analyses, and objective evaluation. But the empirical norms of science and rationality that have informed public policy research have also hidden from view those vexing aspects of public policy discourse outside of methodological rigor. Phrases such as “three strikes and you’re out” or “flood of immigrants” or “don’t ask, don’t tell” or “crack baby” or “the death tax” have come to play crucial roles in public policy, not because of the reality they are purported to reflect, but because the meanings, emotions, and imagery connoted by these symbolizations resonate in our culture. Social practices, the very material of social order and cultural stability, are inextricably linked to the policy discourse that accompanies social change. Eventually a winning narrative dominates and becomes institutionalized into practice and implemented via public administration. Policy is symbiotically associated with these winning narratives. Practices might change again, but this inevitably entails renewed political contestation. The competition among symbolizations does not imply that the best narrative wins, only that a narrative has won for the time being. However, unsettling the established narrative is a difficult political task, particularly when the narrative has evolved into habitual institutionalized practice. Governing Narratives convincingly links public policy to the discourse and rhetoric of deliberative politics.

Taking a multidisciplinary perspective (including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science amongst others) and using examples from across the globe, this book provides a detailed understanding of the complex and highly contested nature of drug policy, drug policy making, and the theoretical perspectives that inform the study of drug policy. It draws on four different theoretical perspectives: evidence-informed policy, policy process theories, democratic theory, and post-structural policy analysis. The use and trade in illegal drugs is a global phenomenon. It is viewed by governments as a significant social, legal, and health problem that shows no signs of abating. The key questions explored throughout this book are what governments and other bodies of social regulation should do about illicit drugs, including drug policies aimed at improving health and reducing harm, drug laws and regulation, and the role of research and values in policy development. Seeing policy formation as dynamic iterative interactions between actors, ideas, institutions, and networks of policy advocates, the book explores how policy problems are constructed and policy solutions selected, and how these processes intersect with research evidence and values. This then animates the call to democratise drug policy and bring about inclusive meaningful participation in policy development in order to provide the opportunity for better, more effective, and value-aligned drug policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of drug policy from a number of disciplines, including public health, sociology, criminology, and political science.

Enriched by numerous case studies and years of client experience, this book guides readers to move beyond the tangled web of stories they tell themselves and others about their lives, relationships, illnesses, and disruptive life patterns. Step-by-step, the chapters uncover the origins of behaviors and feelings such as drug or alcohol addiction, failed careers, and depression. Hidden loyalties to people and ideas are introduced as the underlying causes of these obstacles, which cloud the path to success and cause people to believe the stories they tell themselves, eventually losing touch with the truth. Through the examples in this book, readers will learn to acknowledge and embrace truth, spelling out the explicit facts and rejecting the fictions they have created to excuse their failings.

"Struggling to raise her little brother Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star-gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold. By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery"--

This book examines the geographic displacement of the illicit drug industry as a side effect of United States foreign policy. To reduce the supply of cocaine and heroin from abroad, the US has relied on coercion against farmers, traffickers and governments, but this has only exacerbated the world's drugs problems. US Foreign Policy and the War on Drugs develops and applies a causal mechanism to explain the displacement, analyzing US anti-drug initiatives at different times and in various regions. The findings clearly show that American foreign policy has been a major driving force behind the global spread of the illicit drug industry, calling for urgent revision. This book will be of interest to students of US foreign policy, security studies and international relations in general.

Stenger alternates his discussions of popular spirituality with a survey of what the findings of 20th-century physics actually mean in laypersons terms--without equations.