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This chapter explores the norms and assumptions that frame and sustain international drug policy and the international drug control regime. Drug policy is conceptualised as a ‘policy fiasco’ that persists despite extensive evidence of goal failure. The absence of effective monitoring and evaluation, impact assessment, stakeholder participation and mainstreaming of rights-based approaches, conflict sensitivity and gender sensitivity is emphasised, substantiating the argument that drug policy is a case study of ‘institutional path dependence’. Drug policy has repeatedly missed targets for achievement of a ‘drug free world’. This is explained through reference to the counterproductive and ‘unintended consequences’ of a drug policy approach of criminalisation. The impacts of drug policy enforcement are shown to be negative, pernicious and disproportionately born by the poor, by vulnerable communities and those subject to discrimination on account of race, gender and class.

This paper aims to explore complexities of compliance with international and customary law when faced with terrorist threats. The paper's thesis asserts that terrorism cannot be successfully repelled unless the legitimacy of international and domestic law is adhered to by states out of a sense of reciprocal obligation in accordance with the principle of pacta sunt servanda (pacts shall be respected).

This paper examines US pronouncements in order to assess strategic validity.

While the Middle East, particularly Iraq, has been the focus of the US “War on terrorism,” the paper suggests two questions: what has been the US response to terrorist threats in the Americas? Have US national security priorities post‐9/11 been unnecessarily diverted from the Americas where much needed support is promised but lacking, and instead have resources been concentrated far beyond domestic and international norms?

The paper examines the US national security priorities, concluding that they have been unproductively diverted from the Americas to the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular. The US fixation upon Middle East “regime‐change”, while neglecting to recognize the dangerous nexus and presence of organized crime and terrorist organizations in the Americas, is illustrative of how the present administration has diverted its post.

This chapter explores the historical context of drug control in the United States, the ongoing regulation of the cannabis market at the State level and the role of the United States in the international negotiations related to the United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions (UNGASS) on drugs in 1998 and 2016. We continue by analysing the position, allies and activities of the United States before and during UNGASS 2016 to provide an understanding of possible scenarios related to the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action review to take place via a High-level Ministerial Segment within the 2019 Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting. While US drug policy is not expected to positively shift in the next few years, State-level regulation of cannabis is expected to continue and create pressure from below.

The intersection between drug control and the death penalty represents a key nexus for human rights and drug reform advocacy and constitutes one of the most visible examples of the link between abusive law enforcement and drug control in the current period. The issue has emerged as a flashpoint of international debates on drugs and is one that raises important questions and challenges for both ‘abolitionist’ countries that oppose the death penalty and ‘retentionist’ States that continue to execute people. The death penalty for drug offences cannot be dismissed as simply an internal matter for States. Not only do executions for drug offences violate significant international human rights legal protections, domestic capital punishment laws in many cases cannot be separated from the influence of the international drug control treaty regime. This chapter will explore the question of the death penalty for drug offences and the challenges it presents for the international drug control regime more broadly.¹

This paper aims to demonstrate the ways in which the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) militates against the interests and situations of people who use drugs. The author reflects on the author’s journey as a drug user, drugs workers and drug user organiser to critique the MDA. The author describes the impact of the MDA on the author’s early experimentation with substances and highlights the limitations of simplistic drugs prevention. The author describes how the MDA maximises drug-related risks and undermines the creation of healthy cultural norms and community learning among people who use drugs. The author talks about the author’s work as a drugs practitioner and mourns the vandalism of the UK’s harm reduction and drug treatment system. This paper describes the opportunity to use drug policy reform as a progressive electoral agenda to begin the journey towards racial and social justice. This paper calls for the rejection of the Big Drugs Lie and the repeal of the failed MDA.

Personal reflection based on experience as drug user, drugs worker and drug user organiser.

Successive UK Governments have used the MDA as a tool of social control and racial discrimination. The Big Drugs Lie undermines science-based and rights-compliant drug policy and drug services and criminalises and puts young people at risk. There is the potential to build a progressive political alliance to remove the impediment of the MDA and use drug policy reform as tools for racial and social justice.

The MDA maximises the harms faced by people who use drugs, stokes stigma and discrimination and has undermined the quality of drug services. The MDA needs to be exposed and challenged as a tool for social control and racial discrimination. Delivering drug policy reform as a progressive electoral strategy could maximise its potential to improve social and racial justice.

This paper represents the view of people who use drugs by a drug user, a view which is seldom expressed in the length and level of argument shown here.

This article considers the recent public debate in the UK on drug classification and the role of the Advisory Council of the Misuse of Drugs, particularly following David Nutt's departure as Chair of the ACMD. It suggests that there have been flaws in the arguments on both sides, and considers some of the implications for wider debate on regulation and control.