Change or Continuity in Drug Policy

The Roles of Science, Media, and Interest Groups

Julie Tieberghien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138203068
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315472355
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

While evidence-based policy is an emerging rhetoric of the desire by and for governments to develop policies based on the best available evidence, drug policy is an area where particular challenges abound. This book is a detailed and comprehensive examination of the contours of drug policy development through the consideration of the particular roles of science, media, and interest groups. Using Belgium as the primary case-study, supplemented by insights gathered from other countries, the author contributes to a richer understanding of the science-policy nexus in the messy, real-world complexities of drug policy. Change or Continuity in Drug Policy: The Roles of Science, Media, and Interest Groups is the first book to bring together policy and media theories, knowledge utilisation models, and public scholarship literature. As such, the book provides unique insights relevant to aspects of change or continuity in drug policies in Europe and beyond.

This book will be of great value to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to academics, practitioners and policymakers with interest in the science-policy nexus with a particular focus on the drug policy domain.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Over the past decades, drugs and drug use have shifted from marginal phenomena to a situation in which they are widely sampled and used (South, 1999; Levine, 2003; Boland, 2008). As long as drug use was seen as pertaining to marginalised and minority groups, it was possible to confine it to a limited place on the policy agenda (Gusfield, 1975). Over the years, serious drug problems have become increasingly connected with a number of other social issues, such as crime, disorder, or poverty (Garland, 2001; Seddon, Ralphs, & Williams, 2008). Gradually, it was also recognised that drugs were pervasive in society and particularly among young people (instead of among marginalised populations only). Drug use moved from exceptional to being part of everyday life (Parker, Aldridge, & Measham, 1998; South, 1999). Referring to drugs as a problem of everyday life or by magnifying existing problems (e.g. crime rates, poverty), politicians soon exploited and inflamed feelings of unease and made it a political issue (MacCoun & Reuter, 2001).

Governments around the world have developed a variety of policies intended to influence whether or not individuals decide to use drugs and to affect the consequences for the individual and the society (Tops, 2001; Eisenbach-Stangl, Moskalewicz, & Thom, 2009; Babor et al., 2010; Pompidou Group, 2011; Hughes & Stevens, 2012; Muscat & Pike, 2012). Drug policies, not only in European nations but also in Australia or the USA, usually comprise a mix of three or four ways of regulating drugs: drug control, treatment, prevention, and harm reduction (MacCoun & Reuter, 2001). Nonetheless, the strategic direction of national drug policies is often discussed in terms of two opposing ideological positions (Kleiman & Hawdon, 2011). As Chatwin (2011) notes in her analysis of European drug policy, policies in Sweden and the Netherlands represent both ends of the restrictive-liberal spectrum: the liberal, pragmatic policy of the Netherlands with the primary aim of harm reduction for the users, and the more moralistic and restrictive zero-tolerance policy of Sweden that aims to eradicate drug use from society. In between these two extremes, countries lie at different points along the continuum. The depth of commitment to these paradigms varies and may evolve among countries. The Netherlands may now be moving towards a more restrictive interpretation of its national liberal drug policy than previously seen (Wouters, 2013; Brewster, 2014). In 2001, Portugal made a radical change towards a more liberal policy based firmly on harm reduction principles. By far the most famous element in this national drug strategy was to decriminalise the personal use of all illicit drugs (Hughes & Stevens, 2012). In contrast, Danish drug policy which used to be known as rather liberal compared with other Nordic countries, is now increasingly saturated with a ‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘tough on crimes’ rhetoric (Asmussen, 2008). In the UK, lately, the crime reduction discourse has shifted more towards a recovery and reintegration discourse (Duke, 2012). Simultaneously, the re-classification of cannabis from Class C to Class B by British policy-makers in 2009 seemed to show a toughening attitude (Seddon et al., 2008; Monaghan, 2011). And, according to Stevens and Measham (2014), the toughening has been extended recently by the practice of banning new psychoactive substances such as mephedrone. Finally, in the light of current debates on reforms in national and global drug control policies (Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2011; UNGASS, 2016), some new approaches to drug control are being tested, for example the legalisation of the cannabis supply in Uruguay and some US states (Singleton & Rubin, 2014; Caulkins et al., 2015). Thus, where drug policy strategies are involved, glimmers of hope to reduce drug-related violence or harms come from several directions. In this context, it is unsurprising that increasing attention has been paid to questions of evidence and effectiveness (Strang et al., 2012): which policies are most effective at reducing harm? What evidence is there of a particular policy’s success or failure? And is evidence, after all, integrated into development or change of drug policies? Exploring the last question, the contribution of scientific knowledge to drug policy development, is this book’s central task.

One of the early visions of how evidence could impact policy was advanced by the American political scientist Lasswell (1951), but expectations about the intersection between scientific knowledge and policy-making have been more widely discussed in the (knowledge utilisation) literature since the 1970s (Caplan, 1979; Weiss, 1979). The term evidence-based policy is, however, relatively new: it was popularised in 1997 in the UK when the Blair Labour government, as part of its strategy of modernisation, put forward the notion that “what counts is what works” (Monaghan, 2011). Since then, it has remained an integral element of public management strategies and policy practice (Clear, 2010; Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014). An evidence-based account assumes that scientific knowledge in policy-making is a given, and that if only policy-makers paid more attention to evidence, society would see better policy (Pearce, 2014). The ideal of evidence-based policy became a global movement and has been echoed in other countries such as Australia, the USA, and Belgium (Verhofstadt, 1999; Rudd 2008; Obama, 2009). Also, international networks such as the Cochrane Collaboration have been developed with this in mind (Devroe, Deschamps, & Hannes, 2008).

The concept of evidence-based policy has become part of the common policy lexicon in the drug policy field too. Throughout the USA, Europe, and further afield, a range of initiatives has been developed with the mission to monitor, review, or broker evidence to better inform policy-making. An important push for the European context was provided with the installation of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) during the 1990s. One of its aims is to identify gaps in knowledge to strengthen the research base for promoting evidence-based policy (Stimson, 1997; Hartnoll, 2004; EMCDDA, 2008). More recently, the European Commission has also been a progressive factor in pushing for balanced, evidence-based drug policies and programmes, as set out in the EU Drugs Strategy 2013–2020:

the drug strategy aims to protect and improve the well-being of society and of the individual, to protect public health, to offer a high level of security for the general public and to take a balanced, integrated and evidence-based approach to the drugs phenomenon.

(Council of the European Union, 2012)

Similarly, such an approach has also been endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly at the latest meeting on the future of global drug control: “We recognize that civil society, as well as the scientific community and academia, plays an important role in addressing and countering the world drug problem” (UNGASS, 2016). Clearly, this plethora has become the benchmark by which drug policies are made and judged.

Endorsing the evidence-based rhetoric is one thing — actually adopting and implementing evidence-based policies is another. The role of evidence within drug policy has already been the focus of considerable criticism (Bourgois 2000; Bennett & Holloway, 2010; Stevens & Rhodes, 2011; Monaghan, 2011; Stevens & Ritter, 2013). Several case-studies have pointed out that scientific knowledge is often called on to provide the facts after value choices have been made by the ruling party, paradoxically to be seen to objectify and de-politicise decisions; in this context, drug policy is often called an ‘un-evidenced-based mess’ (Room, 2005; Hall, 2008; Ritter, 2009; Monaghan, 2011). Drug policy seems to be an area where particular challenges abound, if only because the importance of control of legislative and governmental institutions limits the possibility of new approaches (Houborg & Asmussen, 2014) and (il)licit drugs is one of the most polarised subjects of media coverage. Its often distorted or inaccurate construction has been a recurrent concern (Lancaster, Hughes, Spicer, Matthew-Simmons, & Dillon, 2011). Therefore, as in other fields, attempts (particularly in Australia and the UK) have been made to identify elements of policy-making associated with successful drug policy development or, in other words, ‘good governance’ (Hughes, Lodge, & Ritter, 2010; UKDPC, 2012; MacGregor, Singleton, & Trautmann, 2014; Duke & Thom, 2014; Singleton & Rubin, 2014). A multi-actor, pluralistic perspective is now being embraced, acknowledging that a variety of stakeholders (scientists, practitioners, media, interest groups) frame their views, claims, and interests too, and as such, have opportunities to influence the policy-making process through promotion of evidence-based ideas (MacGregor et al., 2014). However, in this context, drug scholars indicate the need for further theoretical and empirical reflection on the mechanisms, processes, and structures through which policy is informed, made, implemented, and assessed rather than what drug policy is, especially because the political, social, economic context may differ between countries (Tonry, 2010; Hyder et al., 2011; El-Jardall, Lavis, Ataya, & Jarnal, 2012; Monaghan, 2011; MacGregor, 2013; Sznitman, Lewis, & Taubman, 2014; MacGregor et al., 2014).

With the stated desire in mind by and for governments to formulate policies based on the best available scientific evidence, there has recently been a revival of academic dialogue discussing the need for social scientists to shape the representation of ‘newsworthy’ items and to engage in well-informed public and policy debates (Rock, 2010; Wacquant, 2011). Running almost in parallel to the emergence of evidence-based policy is the endeavour that can collectively be termed ‘public sociology’ or ‘public criminology’. It is just over 10 years since Michael Burawoy (2005) proclaimed his manifesto for public sociology making the plea for sociology to reconnect with civil society as its ongoing project. Over succeeding years, there have emerged variants on the theme including calls for more public criminology (e.g. Loader & Sparks, 2011). Public criminology tends to have a narrower focus than its sociological counterpart, focusing mainly on the idea that criminology’s purpose is to contribute to a ‘better’ politics of crime and its regulation. This is considered essential in that criminal justice policy discussions often occur in a febrile atmosphere where ‘penal populism’ (Bottoms, 1995) or ‘totemic toughness’ (Stevens, 2011) have tended to trump rational debate. In an era in which evidence-based policy is promoted, the prospects of a ‘public’ role for scientists are paramount given the ‘hot’ climate in which they operate. There is, however, limited knowledge about whether and how different types of public engagement meaningfully impact on and shape knowledge utilisation in policy-making and whether it stands any chance of producing ‘better’ politics. Understanding the mechanisms through which scientists engage with policy and the roles they take, requires a critical appraisal of the way in which that process actually unfolds in a particular case. As Rhodes (2000) argues, it is interesting to connect analyses of governance processes with the narratives of individuals (such as public scholars).

The aim of the book is to gain a richer understanding of the complexities of the relationship between evidence and drug policy processes, considering this through the lenses of policy and media theories and knowledge utilisation/public scholarship literature. With the reforms of national and global drug control policies currently high on the international agenda (Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2011; Edwards & Galla, 2014; UNGASS, 2016), the science-policy nexus is a matter of much attention for policy-makers and researchers in the drug policy field. However, the tradition of research on the role and nature of evidence use in the context of drug policy is mainly situated in the UK and Australia. Despite a global discourse on evidence-based policies, illuminating policy processes in other countries is still relevant to provide a better understanding of how drug policy processes work and how scientific knowledge is constructed, used or not used in relation to drug policy-making. The few comparative studies in this field have shown that, in a variety of socio-economic, cultural, and political environments, countries may strongly differ in how they do, or do not, value and use scientific research in formulating or shaping drug policy (Nutley, Morton, Jung, & Boaz, 2010; Ritter, Livingston, Chalmers, Berends, & Reuter, 2016).

Belgian drug policy makes an interesting case to examine the complexities of the science-policy nexus, although it neither encompasses a radical or trendsetting policy on the spectrum, nor has it undergone a number of significant changes recently. In most countries the first discussions on drugs and drug policy came into being in the 1960s and 1970s, or, at least, drug policies really came into focus during the HIV epidemic of the 1980s (EMCDDA, 2004; UNODC, 2008; Muscat & Pike, 2012). In contrast, in Belgium, the drug phenomenon was ‘discovered’ very late (De Ruyver, Vander Laenen, & Eelen, 2012). Although the basic Belgian drug law dates back to 24 February 1921 (as a result of Belgium’s ratification of the International Opium Convention in 1912), the Parliamentary Working Group on drugs (PWG) in 1996 actually brought the first serious discussion on how to responsibly deal with the problems of drugs. Thus, drugs did not emerge as a priority for governmental decision-making in Belgium until the mid-1990s and even then there was much less national cohesion on how to best deal with the issue (EMCDDA, 1995). The beginnings of the development of Belgian drug policy were caught between toleration of drug users and understanding of the societal problems they face, and efforts to control the drug problem (Cartuyvels & Hebberecht, 2002). Relations were particularly strained with the Netherlands and debates about the success or failure of the liberal model in the neighbouring country were rife (Fijnaut & De Ruyver, 2014). And, while in this period EMCDDA’s monitoring activities were further elaborated, Belgium appeared to be one of the few countries which had not yet developed any insight into the nature and extent of the drug phenomenon in the country (Kenis, 1997; Decorte, Mortelmans, Tieberghien, & De Moor, 2009). However, by the end of the 1990s, interest in this area expanded quickly and the drugs issue was brought into the public arena. Drug policy became the subject of contested debates among policy-makers, professionals, scientists, journalists, and the public. Widespread non-government stakeholder consultation at multiple levels (a bottom-up approach) became apparent in the Belgian case and can be considered vital in drug policy governance processes. This occurred in parallel with an emergence of the rhetoric of evidence-based policy by which Belgian policy-makers showed commitment to the use of evidence in policy-making (Verhofstadt, 1999). So, clearly, Belgian policy-makers were able and willing to learn from a variety of evidence including scientific knowledge, practice-based knowledge, and (inter)national experiences or evaluations of drug policies, negative as well as positive. Therefore, development of national drug policy in Belgium is of importance and worthy of further investigation. In addition, given the current overall objective of an evidence-based approach to the drugs problem (Council of the European Union, 2012; International Drug Policy Consortium, 2016), there is also a practical reason to review the Belgian case. The principles underlying Belgian drug policy today date back to the late-1990s. Drug policy has not been a contentious issue in Belgium since. During this 20-year period, only some elements of the policy have been reviewed internally (Inter-Ministerial Conference on Drugs, 2010), while the foundations of current Belgian drug policy have never been analysed externally in their entirety.

In what follows, Belgian drug policy development between 1996 and 2003 is used as a critical case for looking at and discussing the mechanisms and processes through which policy is (not) informed by scientific knowledge, with a particular focus on the practices of public scholars and the roles of the media and interest groups. This book attempts to place the national perspective in an international context and may offer useful lessons for other contexts, including the importance of scientific knowledge and non-government stakeholder involvement in drug policy-making; bringing different ways of regulating together under a coherent policy framework; and standing up to ideological criticisms, domestic and international, with evidence and pragmatism. In this context...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Science-Policy Nexus: From Knowledge Utilisation Models to the Evidence Movement
• 3 Analysing Drug Policy: Documents, Elites, and Related Challenges
• 4 Incremental Steps in the Opening of a Policy Window
• 5 The Parliamentary Working Group on Drugs: 1996–1997
• 6 Turbulent Intermezzo: 1997–2000
• 7 The First National Drug Strategy: Federal Drug Policy Note (2001)
• 8 The Reform of Belgian Drug Law: 2002–2003
• 9 Concluding Thoughts
• References
• Index