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.

This book concludes that AmericaOs drug policy should be reoriented in several ways to be more effective.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

One of the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

The American Disease is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the United States. Supporting the theory that Americans' attitudes toward drugs have followed a cyclic pattern of tolerance and restraint, author David F. Musto examines the relationz between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War up to the present. Originally published in 1973, and then in an expanded edition in 1987, this third edition contains a new chapter and preface that both address the renewed debate on policy and drug legislation from the end of the Reagan administration to the current Clinton administration. Here, Musto thoroughly investigates how our nation has dealt with such issues as the controversies over prevention programs and mandatory minimum sentencing, the catastrophe of the crack epidemic, the fear of a heroin revival, and the continued debate over the legalization of marijuana.

This book locates the rise of illicit drug use within the historical development of late industrial society and challenges the prevailing view. Highlighting key areas of continuity and the on-going value of classic criminological theory, it is argued that recent trends do not constitute the radical departure that is often supposed.

This volume addresses the interface of two major national problems: the epidemic of HIV-AIDS and the widespread use of illegal injection drugs. Should communities have the option of giving drug users sterile needles or bleach for cleaning needs in order to reduce the spread of HIV? Does needle distribution worsen the drug problem, as opponents of such programs argue? Do they reduce the spread of other serious diseases, such as hepatitis? Do they result in more used needles being carelessly discarded in the community? The panel takes a critical look at the available data on needle exchange and bleach distribution programs, reaches conclusions about their efficacy, and offers concrete recommendations for public policy to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. The book includes current knowledge about the epidemiologies of HIV/AIDS and injection drug use; characteristics of needle exchange and bleach distribution programs and views on those programs from diverse community groups; and a discussion of laws designed to control possession of needles, their impact on needle sharing among injection drug users, and their implications for needle exchange programs.