Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine the politics, political economy, and fallout of hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria. Hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drug in Nigeria, such as opioid analgesics, is a very complex and multifaceted one, which usually involves the interplay of many factors and parties.

Policy manuals, official government gazettes (legislations, regulations, Acts and decrees), academic literature and a direct ethnographic observation of events surrounding the regulation of prescription drugs were reviewed and engaged.

The results revealed that Nigerian and global political economy and politics interface to define the direction of the new restrictive opioid policy, with resultant friction between prohibition and consumption. The reviews showed that the overarching “get-tough” and “repressive” policy are not necessarily founded on empirical evidence of an increase in prescription drug sales or use, but more as a product of the interplay of both internal and external politics and the prevailing socioeconomic order.

Instead of borrowing extensively from or being influenced by repressive Western drug laws and perspectives, Nigerian policymakers on prescription opioids should take control of the process by drawing up a home-grown policy that is less intrusive and punitive in nature for better outcomes. A mental sea change is required to understand the intrigues of Western power in Nigeria’s politics and political economy to avoid the continuous symptomatic failure of drug policy.

The politics and economic influence of the United Nations, USA and Western powers, as well as the axiom of moral panic of prescription drugs scares within the Nigerian environment, are particularly significant in the making of the emerging hawkish policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria.

Even though trans and nonbinary athletes regularly experience oppression and exclusion in sport, many encounter sport as a site of gendered liberation. Most literature on trans and nonbinary athletes focuses on experiences of oppression; much less examines trans and nonbinary athlete resistance. Centring the voices of trans and nonbinary athletes in sport is essential for attending to the complexity of their experiences in sport. I draw on my own experiences as a nonbinary elite boxer to explore what is at stake in sport and demonstrate how sport can function as a site of joy and resistance for trans and nonbinary athletes. Amid ongoing debates about whether or not it is fair for trans women athletes to compete in sport, Gleaves and Lehrbach (2016) argued that sport does not solely concern who wins but also encompasses the ‘the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’ in competitive sport. I argue that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in competitive sport stay with us for a lifetime. These stories shape how we make sense of ourselves and others. I explore how women, trans, and nonbinary boxers issue a threat to patriarchal cisheteronormative customs in boxing, precisely because we disrupt the assumption that aggression is the male domain and that masculinity equals cisgender maleness. I contribute to the growing body of literature centring trans and nonbinary voices by drawing attention to how trans and nonbinary athletes' experiences of sport are characterized not only by exclusion and oppression but also by joy and resistance.

The purpose of this study is to understand the complex interplay between illicit opioids trade and consumption practices and state policies that aim to reduce their misuse.

The study adopted an exploratory design. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 31 commercially oriented drug dealers in Uyo, Nigeria. The framework approach was used in data analyses, while “friction” provided the interpretive lens.

Accounts revealed public concerns over the misuse of tramadol and other opioids among young people and the associated health and social harms. These concerns provided support for enforcement-based approaches to prescription opioids control, including police raids on pharmacy stores. These measures did not curtail opioids supply and consumption. Instead, they constrained access to essential medicines for pain management, encouraged illegal markets and fuelled law enforcement corruption in the form of police complicity in illegal tramadol trade.

The findings reveal the frictions of drug control in Nigeria, wherein enforcement-based approaches gained traction through public concerns about opioids misuse but also faced resistance due to the persistence of non-medical use and illegal supply channels made possible by law enforcement complicity. These indicate a need to prioritize approaches that seek to reduce illegal supply and misuse of opioids while ensuring availability of these medications for health-care needs.

The study is unique in its focus on the creative tension that exists between state control measures and local opioids supply and consumption practices.

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical account of the hate crime (HC) paradigm by exploring its historical legal definition and the limitations in addressing the multiple and structural discriminations faced by minority groups. Specifically, the article focuses on the case of Italy, where in recent years a fierce debate over a proposed law on HC against LGBT+ and disabled people ended in its rejection due to neoconservative and Catholic opposition.

Drawing on critical socio-criminological literature on HC, the paper analyses the Italian debates and socio-legal context over the past two decades regarding discrimination against LGBT+ groups and its (lack of) criminalization. It also provides a secondary analysis of recent data on violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people, collected by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).

The analysis of the debate and the data collected shows that the criminal definition of HC is insufficient to capture the wider range of social and cultural violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people. Indeed, data analysis shows the effect of the low level of recognition of rights on the propensity of people to denounce and of social practitioners to recognize, discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people. It is therefore argued that the discussion on HC should move beyond the criminalization of individual violence to be entrenched in a broader reflection over the lack of recognition of sexual citizenship rights which perpetuates the vulnerability of LGBT+ people.

This paper contributes to the international socio-criminological debate on HC. It argues for a comprehensive framework that recognizes the structural nature of discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups by framing discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people as a citizenship right rather than a criminal justice issue.

In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women's sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit.

Throughout the world, women encounter strong patriarchal values that promote the virtue of women's chastity. Within numerous conservative societies, such as certain regions of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the intactness of the hymen in a young woman is viewed as emblematic of her dignity, righteousness, and pride. Participants in our investigations highlighted that hymen rupture stigma remains prevalent in many parts of Pakistan, often leading to social consequences or disapproval of women who want to participate in sports. Additionally, participants disclosed that some women had internalized the hymen rupture stigma, and families might reinforce it. This chapter contributes to the limited scholarship concerning how social norms, hymen rupture stigma, and family values influence Muslim women's participation or lack of participation in sports in Pakistan.