Dealing With Drugs: Strategy, Policy and Practice

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the strategic and policy responses to illicit drug use in the Britain since the mid-1980s. It maps and discusses the ways in which the UK government has aimed to ensure a more consistent framework for the delivery of drugs services and interventions. In addition, the book explores a range of political, economic, social and global factors that have provided the context for the development and implementation of a series of over-arching policy measures in the last two decades.

This volume seeks to examine how the Criminal Justice System has become a significant (but not exclusive) framework for the design, delivery and funding of drug services and interventions. Although other approaches remain important to understanding the scope and range of responses to substance misuse, this text explores the importance and centrality of the Criminal Justice System as a framework for and specific influence on policy, funding and targets in recent years.

Richard Huggins is Associate Dean, Social Sciences and Law, Oxford Brookes University. In addition to this he is the trustee and director of the Substance Misure Arrest Referral Team and a trustee (Chair) and director of the Oxfordshire User Team, a pioneering user advocacy charity.