Transcript Slide 1

The use and abuse of
evidence in drug
policy
Alex Stevens
Evidence versus ideology
•
“New Labour is a party of ideas and
ideals but not of outdated ideology. What
counts is what works” (Labour Party
Manifesto, 1997: 1).
• “Evidence remains the cornerstone of
government policy” (Robert Street,
Home Office, 1st May 2008).
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
What is the role of evidence in UK drug policy?
of the link between evidence and
• Models
policy
 Developing an ideological model of this link
the use of evidence on drugs
• Testing
and crime
 Drugs cause half of crime?
 The Drug Treatment and Testing Order
• The recent cannabis kerfuffle
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Models of the evidence-policy link
• Linear
 Fails to describe most uses of evidence
(Weiss, 1976)
• Enlightenment
 Fails to predict selective filtering in use of
evidence
(Young et al 2002)
• Tactical/political
 Does not predict systematic bias in
selection of evidence
• Ideological
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Evidence and ideology
• Two conceptions of ideology:
• Broad
 Ideology as an internally coherent set of
political ideas.
• Narrow
 Ideology as symbolic forms which sustain
“systematically asymmetrical relations of
power” (Thompson, 1990)
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
The modus operandi of ideology
• Legitimation
 rationalising and reinforcing existing order.
• Dissimulation
 domination concealed, denied or obscured.
• Unification
 creation of false unity.
• Fragmentation
 creation of threatening outsider groups.
• Reification
 representation of time-specific states as
never-ending and inevitable.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
An ideological model of the use of evidence
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Powerful participants in discursive struggles
around policy issues will make selective use of
the available evidence.
They will tend to select evidence that
promotes/does not challenge the legitimacy of
their current power.
This leads to the reproduction and use of
evidence in ways which sustain power
asymmetry between participants in the debate.
“Survival of the ideas that fit”.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Evidence for policy – “drugs cause crime”
of the proportion of crime that
• Estimates
is caused/driven/motivated by crime in
policy debates:
 Vary from 20% to 70%
 Have settled at about a half.
cost of “drug-related crime”
• Estimated
 £13.9 billion per year (Gordon et al 2006).
on misinterpretation of
• Based
“pathologising studies” of arrestees and
drug users in treatment.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Overestimating proportions from arrestees
All street level crime
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Cleared up crime
"Drug-related" cleared up
crime
Drug users over-represented in arrestee samples
Logistic regression of data from Offending, Crime and Justice Survey
showing predictors of reported arrest among self-reported offenders,
aged 10-25 (n=1,370).
Odds ratio
Significance (p)
Sex is male
2.15
<0.05
Older age
1.11
n/s
Ethnicity is black or mixed
2.71
<0.05
Prolific offending
0.91
n/s
Ever truanted
1.68
n/s
Ever excluded from school
0.94
n/s
In work or education
0.32
<0.01
Any drug use in previous year
1.91
<0.05
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Drug user reports of police supervision
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Rhodes et al 2007: qualitative study of drug
injecting in South Wales
 ‘Homeless injectors spoke of police being “on your
case everyday, even if you’ve done nothing wrong”,
of being “constantly hassled”, of police who “won’t
leave you alone”’.
 “They [the police] know every smackhead in Merthyr.
That's why they are always on our cases, searching
us and this and that.”
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Also indicates extra likelihood of police
arresting drug users when they offend.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Overestimating costs from drug users in treatment
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The estimate of £13.9 billion in annual crime
costs from problematic drug users rests on the
National Treatment Outcome Research Study
Asked questions of 1,075 drug users at entry to
treatment about offending in previous three
months
 extrapolates from them to estimated 327,466
problematic drug users.
Assumes that:
 Offending is accurately reported.
 Offending is the same in the entire year as the three
months previous to treatment.
 PDUs in treatment offend at the same rate as all
PDUs.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Offending peaks before treatment entry
Increase in offending prior to entry to treatment in
NTORS sample
No. of offences convicted
1800
1600
1400
16-24
1200
25-29
1000
800
30-34
35+
600
All ages
400
200
0
1990
1991
1992
Source: adapted from Gossop et al 2006
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
1993
1994
1995
Summary on drugs and crime
• Proportion of crime by drug users likely
to be less than estimated.
• Value of crime by drug users likely to be
less than estimated.
• Plus, doubts that the relationship
between drug use and crime is causal
 Search for the “third variable”.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Use of evidence in drug policy:
1.The DTTO
available evidence:
• The
 High correlation between drug use and
crime
• Debate about the proportions, costs and the causal
mechanism.
• Possibility that this link may be due to prohibition.
• Possibility that it may be due to social inequality.
 Treatment works in reducing drug use and
offending.
 Debate about the effectiveness of courtordered treatment (e.g. US Drug Courts).
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Coding the DTTO discourse
DTTO as
THE answer
Drug court
Treatment
outcome
Drugs and
crime
Crime
Social
order
prevention
as peace
Evidence for
translation
Evidencebased policy
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Toughness
DTTO as
THE answer
DTTO discourse: the unused codes
Evolutionary
Ideological
EBP
Criticism
of EBP
Political/
tactical EBP
Deviance
disavowal
Crime as not
"drug driven"
Crimeorder
and
Social
asinequality
inequality
Failures of
prohibition
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Co-existence of
drugs and crime
Underlying
social problems
Crime
precedes drugs
Systemic
drug-related
crime
Previous failures
to prevent drug
use
State support
for drug trade
DTTO as
THE answer
Drug court
Ideological use of evidence?
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“Dissimulation”
 By hiding the failure of prohibition to stop drug use.
 By concealing the role of inequality in the link
between drug use and crime.
“Unification” and “Fragmentation”
 By identifying and targeting an “other” group of
prolific criminals.
 As opposed to an imaginary, law-abiding majority.
“Legitimation”
 By rationalising the projection of power on to the
bodies of this “other” group and presenting this as
“the” solution to drug-related crime.
Supporting power asymmetry by extending the
scope of drug prohibition.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Mary Douglas on unification/fragmentation
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Both consumption and its regulation are forms
of communication.
Identified social dangers = “weapons… in the
struggle for ideological domination”
Separation of the dirty from the pure is not
rational but about order maintenance.
 We create categories (and stick to them) as a form of
“mutual coercion”
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Dirt = “matter out of place”
Anomalous substances must be pushed back
into one category or another
 Dirty or pure
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
The UK cannabis kerfuffle: 2004-2008
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2004: In response to various reports (including ACMD
2002), govt’ reclassifies to class C.
Max’ sentence for supply of class C increased to 14
years.
Police introduce presumption of non-arrest of adult
cannabis possessors.
2005: In run-up to election, Charles Clarke refers
decision back to ACMD.
2006: ACMD reaffirms class C and is accepted.
2007: Brown refers decision back again to ACMD
2008: ACMD re-reaffirms class C, but cannabis rereclassified to class B.
Police continue presumption of non-arrest for first
offences.
Meanwhile, cannabis use continues to fall.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Cannabis: The evidence
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No risk of fatal overdose
 Cannabis (even skunk) is not “lethal”.
Significant association with schizophrenia
 Ongoing debate on causality
Some evidence of association with cancer and
heart disease.
UK market becoming dominated by stronger
forms of domestically cultivated skunk
 10% average THC content, compared to 6% THC in
cannabis resin.
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No evidence that legal changes affect patterns
of use.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Cannabis: the debate
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Cannabis is dangerous because it’s stronger
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So – “ignore the experts”.
 Than when “we” took it.
Cannabis causes mental illness
Drug classification “sends out signals” to young
people
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Cannabis: the ideology
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Drug users (i.e. very nearly all of us) separate “my”
drugs, from “your” drugs.
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“Your” drugs seen as dirt
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“Your” drugs further stigmatised by association with
threatening groups;
 “matter out of place”.
 Young, unemployed (black) men.
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Normalisation of cannabis makes it anomalous
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Leading to calls to expurgate cannabis and its users:
 So it has to be pushed back into the dirty category.
 Unification (of non cannabis users)
 Fragmentation (against cannabis users)
 Legitimation (penal sanctions against some drug users)
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy
Conclusions
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Evidence is not necessary for the penalisation
of drug users.
Evidence is used selectively to bolster political
positions.
This selective use of evidence tends to support
inequality.
Drug policy is about “sending messages”
 Policy as symbolic form.
These messages must be contested at the
level of evidence, but also at the level of the
values and power asymmetry that underpin
them.
Use and abuse of evidence in drug policy