Drugs, Law, People, Place and the State: Ongoing regulation, resistance and change

By Stewart Williams

Book Overview

Though any psychoactive substance can be revered or reviled as a drug, as people's cultural norms shift, ultimately its status is determined in law by the state. This publication explores the regulation of drugs - alcohol and cannabis to heroin and cocaine - and practices such as social drinking and public injecting under political regimes. Drugs are discussed in their geographical contexts: the colonial legacy of cannabis prohibition for bioprospecting in Africa; the veracity of the persistent notion of the narco-state; Turkey's governance of drinking amid civil unrest; and alcohol's place in the neoliberal political economy of Ireland. In addition, drug policies are examined: from problems in managing drug-related litter in the UK to supervised injecting facility provision in Australia; harm reduction in Canada; and the global network of drug policy activists. Place is significant, but porous borders, territorial overlaps and multi-scalar linkages are influential in remaking the world through current challenges to the 'war on drugs'. This book was originally published as a special issue of Space & Polity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138700452
• ISBN13: 9781138700451
• Release Date: June 2017
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.0" x 10.0"