In this issue

Citation

(2011), "In this issue", Drugs and Alcohol Today, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dat.2011.54411daa.002

In this issue

Article Type: In this issue From: Drugs and Alcohol Today, Volume 11, Issue 4

Over the past decade, alcohol prohibition has returned onto the agenda. Public debate in the UK and other northern European countries has been driven by concern over dangerous levels of drinking, and the appearance of new lifestyle patterns that have alarmed popular commentators and parts of the research community. In some ways, the debate has echoed the discourse on illicit substances, with moral outrage, social panic and a deliberate construction of young drinkers as a challenge to the social order. Surprisingly, or not, the commentary has had little to go on save observation and anecdote. We are, therefore, delighted to share the empirically grounded work of Daniel Briggs et al. with their remarkably incisive accounts of young, British holidaymakers in Ibiza. This rich ethnography of consumption patterns among a cohort, that would consider themselves as “unproblematic”, is set within a theoretical frame drawing on concepts of the carnivalesque developed by Bhaktin.

Closely related in a sense is the contribution by Peter Cohen, commenting on legislative proposals under discussion in the Dutch parliament to redefine cannabis with a THC above 15 per cent as a class A substance. It should be remembered that when a similar distinction was mooted in the UK, it was dismissed as unworkable by the outgoing Brown government. Cohen is less concerned with practicalities than principles and objectives, and regards the proposal as an attempt to intensify criminalization of both producers and consumers.

Fleetwood et al. pick up a different legal issue pertaining to drug couriering. This issue constitutes part of a complex debate about drug policy in general and whom it is intended to protect. One of the glaring contradictions discussed in previous issues of this journal is the harsh punishment meted out against drug couriers, which is rarely in proportion to their actual significance in the drug trade. Fleetwood et al. pick up the question of female couriers to locate this in the context of UN resolutions on gender equality. Official concerns are conventionally supported by popular explanations that women are victims, based on crude gender stereotypes without leading to a remission of the penal tariff.

The piece by Miller et al. throws an interesting side light on the celebrated Randomized Injectable Opiate Treatment Trials (RIOTT). The authors grapple with a rarely explored practical question about implementation and roll out: what do the neighbours say? While providing long-term opiate users with their drug of preference at a supervised site may have multiple benefits in both public health and crime reduction such schemes are set to fail if the neighbours complain. Taking the NIMBY factor seriously has inspired the systematic look into public nuisance associated with RIOTT clients in one of the trial sites. It opens an important discussion on environmental factors that are often forgotten, but crucial to the success of treatment delivery.