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The article focuses on a study in Scotland, United Kingdom of prioritizing protection of children from secondhand smoke exposure (SHSE) in a private space where smoke-free public places are enforced. It discusses the difficulty of political acceptability in enforcing the issue and the intervention over parental autonomy to smoke in their own home. The article also reports on the findings based on the study used called Reducing Families' Exposure to Secondhand Smoke (REFRESH) project.

The article informs that Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) has published a white paper for helping organizations to prepare for challenges that legalization of recreational cannabis may create for workplace safety in Canada.

Ditsi Carolino's "Huwag Kang Papatay" (Thou Shall Not Kill, 2017) is an unconventional Jesus film. As a documentary, it presents the problems and the responses by members of the Roman Catholic Church in Metro Manila to the so-called "War on Drugs" (commonly known as Tokhang) of the Duterte government that resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killing (EJK) victims. From a biblical lens, this paper analyzes examples of grassroots recontextualizing interpretations of select Matthean passages like (1) Mt 6:9−13, the Lord's Prayer, in the context of praying for an extrajudicial killing victim; (2) Mt 2:1−18, a street theater adaptation showing the massacre of the innocents, representing the beginning of the EJKs; and (3) Mt 27:27−50, a street theater adaptation of Jesus' passion recontextualized in the plight of the victimized drug personalities. These episodes are examined using insights from biblical narrative criticism, performance criticism, empire studies, ritual studies and a liberationist approaches. The paper concludes that biblical interpretations from the ground in this documentary film demonstrate Matthew's anti-empire message by recontextualizing Jesus's story in the context of extrajudicial killings to advocate for political dialogue and action-response against human rights violations and development issues caused by the EJKs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of narcotics in Pakistan is mainly looked at as if it is something isolated from the political games that are played at regional and global levels. This research is partially an attempt to explain why this could not be the case. It looks at the connections between regional and global divisions of power relationships to set stage for understanding the flaws in our conception of the menace of drugs and their proliferation in our society at certain moments in our history. The role of shadow economy in this context has also remained under researched. This paper attempted to address these gaps in knowledge that mislead, misdirect our understanding and conception of drugs and their use, as well as affecting our effectively reacting to these social problematics. The conclusions drawn are the way forward for our policy making apparatuses. Pakistan is signatory to a number of bilateral and multilateral pacts and treaties on narcotics control. It also has vibrant national anti-narcotics and illicit drugs prevention policies and various task forces to deal with the menace of use and abuse of banned substances like National Anti-Narcotics Council (NANC), Ministry of Narcotics Control, Inter-Agency Task Force, Anti- Narcotics Force, National Anti-Narcotics Policy. Despite all these efforts, use and abuse of drugs is on the rise. In the present international scenario, especially the FATF related policies, international pressure and procedures, use of narcotics is no longer an isolated incident but rather part of a very huge ensemble of problems for Pakistan to deal with. Legally, there are no barriers to going after the complete eradication of the narcotics in Pakistan. In other words, the problem is not having the required legal and administrative cover to prevent the use, sale, and import of narcotics in Pakistan. There is plenty of cover available to drug enforcement agencies but still the menace of drug control is on the rise. This gives rise to many problematics. Why is it the case that with so much international cooperation the menace of illicit drugs is on the rise? Could this be the result of what international relations theorists refer to as "the shadow economy" which fuels this massive inflow of drugs, appropriately labelled as "Afghan opiates," in Pakistan? What are the bottlenecks that prevent implementation of narcotics control policies? Are there other factors that hamper effective implementation of avowed national commitment against the use and abuse of narcotics in Pakistan? Is shadow economy, that the world has failed to harness, something that Pakistan can tackle with its limited resources? Or are there any capacity issues and double-dealings that leave the strongly worded national commitment against banned substances in the lurch? Answers to these pressing questions have been sought in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, youth drug use has become a cause of increasing concern across Asia and has inspired hardening drug control measures. However, consistently missing from drug narratives is a deeper engagement with young people themselves on why they use drugs and an understanding of the social, political, economic and cultural forces that shape their interactions with drugs. By engaging with the lived experiences of young people in the Myanmar city of Taunggyi, this paper offers new insights into the everyday pathways and practices through which systemic risk factors – poverty, large-scale local drug production and poor welfare provision – materialise into drug harms. This paper draws attention to three factors that shape these pathways: first, the role that drug-selling and drug consumption plays in the coping strategies that people deploy in an environment of economic hardship; second, the intersections between drug use and gendered conceptions of youth; and, third, the everyday institutional practices of local authorities. Exploring young people's testimonies offers a grounded perspective for considering what can be done to reduce drug harms in a context where the structural determinants of drug risks are deeply entrenched and, in the context of post-coup Myanmar, likely to worsen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drugs of abuse are psychoactive substances illicitly distributed and used worldwide. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they represent a public health issue and are directly related to several social problems. The recent increase in appearances of new psychoactive substances (NPS), derived from structural modifications of existing psychoactive substances, poses a threat to public health and forensic laboratories worldwide, as little is known about these substances. This study aimed to chemically and geographically map drugs of abuse from blotter papers seized by the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro State (PCERJ) between 2006 and 2019. High-performance analytical techniques, such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and Orbitrap mass spectrometry (Orbitrap-MS), combined with statistical analyses, were employed to characterize the seized samples. The most common chemical compounds in NPS found in this study were synthetic phenethylamines, i.e., molecules from the 25I-NBOH (2-(((4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethyl)amino)methyl)phenol) and 25I-NBOMe (2-(4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)ethanamine) families. Prior to 2014, the majority of seized blotter papers contained lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and were concentrated in the Metropolitan region. An upsurge in blotter paper seizures was observed from 2014 to 2017; the most common substances during this time were from the NBOMe family. NBOH compounds emerged in 2016 in coastal regions with high tourism, reaching over 1300 items only in 2017. Only one synthetic cannabinoid was found among the blotter papers seized in Rio de Janeiro between 2006 and 2019. The assembled chemical data and statistical analyses allowed the mapping and monitoring of the chemical profiles of the seized blotter papers, providing a strong foundation for the understanding of the origins and movement of these drugs around the RJ State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rafael Lerma is an award-winning and outspoken Filipino photojournalist who works for the broadsheet The Philippine Daily Inquirer. When President Rodrigo Duterte took office on 01 July 2016 and started to implement his campaign promise to mount a thorough war on drugs, Lerma became one of the photojournalists who consistently documented the grisly track of the said war. His most iconic image--that of a dead pedicab driver being cradled by his grief-stricken widow--did not escape the rambling speech of the President himself during the latter's first State of the Nation Address. This paper culls 25 of Lerma's most famous images related to the Duterte administration's drug war. From these 25 images, six recurrent sociocultural icons have been identified: 1) poverty; 2) the dehumanization/demonization of the casualties; 3) religion; 4) the weakness of governance in the Philippines; 5) Operation Plan Tokhang conducted by the Philippine National Police; and 6) the state and the nation. By subjecting these visual sociocultural icons to an inverted version of the semiology of the early phase of the French philosopher and cultural critic Roland Barthes, the researcher textually explores Lerma's take on the said war. Furthermore, this paper theoretically tests the capacity of Barthes' semiology to tackle not only ideological discourses that are tucked beneath some sociocultural icons but more so counterideological discourses that are launched by the less privileged sectors of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the lived experience of forgiveness and uniquely its potential for discovering and negotiating new identities for people dealing with their addiction to substances, within the context and demands of English drug policy. Little research has focused on the development of shared meanings of forgiveness in relation to the social relationships impacted by addiction, and this paper seeks to promote such work. The paper is emergent from a co-production project examining forgiveness and its relationship to identity with Pushing Change a peer community for addressing substance misuse. Identity is at the heart of debates concerning drug addiction and criminal justice, however, little attention has been paid to the ways in which interventions shape individual identity, and the meanings of those relationships to the wider community. Through developing an understanding of forgiveness this project identified generative principles that allowed for new ways of thinking and practising forgiveness in relation to addressing substance misuse and the criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of illicit synthetic drugs has undergone a significant shift from China to the Golden Triangle, profoundly impacting Southeast Asia's legal systems, drug enforcement and public health. This paper reviews the production, distribution and use of illicit synthetic drugs in the region, explaining their alignment with regulatory policies in China and Southeast Asia. The public health effects resulting from the increased production and use of synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia are reviewed, emphasizing the importance of public health protections such as harm reduction, treatment and rehabilitation. This study also discusses legal mechanisms to enhance control over illicit drug activities, mainly compound‐wide legislative prohibitions targeting present and future fentanyl and methamphetamine analogues. Moreover, it underscores the urgency for collaborative efforts between China and Southeast Asian states to mitigate the influence of Chinese cartels operating in the region. By elucidating the multifaceted challenges posed by the shifting drug production landscape, this paper highlights the importance of a comprehensive approach encompassing regulatory, law enforcement and public health measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the interplay between the right to life, right to development, bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience, and demonstrates how these factors collectively shape the concept of freedom of consciousness and simultaneously lead to increased access to altered states of consciousness, cognitive liberty, freedom of development, and the peak experiences that Abraham Maslow researched. Second chapter delves into the intersection of human rights and drug policy, specifically examining the implications of the War on Drugs on individual freedoms. It argues that the War on Drugs has led to a violation of fundamental human rights, including cognitive liberty, bodily autonomy, and the right to life. Through an analysis of international human rights law and case studies from around the world, the paper demonstrates how drug-related crimes have resulted in mass incarceration, violence, and human rights abuses. It also explores decriminalization of drug use, end of War on Drugs and criminalization of its' crimes. The research results provide insights into the interrelation between these three concepts, shedding light on how they intersect and influence each other and in context of War on Drugs hostile environment. Findings also suggest that the War on Drugs has resulted in a significant violation of fundamental human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite steady progress in drug control work, drug-related crimes are ranked third in the total number of criminal cases in China. Based on in-depth interviews with 24 offenders who are now incarcerated for drug offenses, this paper examines the strategies employed by drug offenders to evade detection and mitigate their punishment for drug dealing. Their most frequently-used strategies focus on filtering out risky people, ensuring information asymmetry and knowing when to stop. Exploring how offenders adapt their behavior in response to punishment helps to further our understanding of crime commission and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American policymakers have long waged a costly, punitive, racist, and ineffective drug war that casts certain drug use as immoral and those who engage in it as deviant criminals. The War on Drugs has been defined by a myopic focus on controlling the supply of drugs that are labeled as dangerous and addictive. The decisions as to which drugs fall within these categories have neither been made by health agencies nor based on scientific evidence. Instead, law enforcement agencies have been at the helm of the drug war advocating for and enforcing prohibition. The drug war has been a failure on all counts. American taxpayers have invested trillions of dollars in the war, yet the United States continues to witness record-setting numbers of drug overdose deaths every year. The drug war has been used as a tool to disenfranchise and incarcerate generations of individuals minoritized as Black. Black Americans are nearly six times more likely to be incarcerated for drug-related offenses than their white counterparts, notwithstanding that substance use rates are comparable across those populations. The public rhetoric concerning drug use has notably changed in recent years. Many policymakers have replaced the punitive, law-and-order narratives of the Old Drug War with progressive, public-health-oriented language, which suggests that the Old Drug War has ended. We, however, caution against such a conclusion. This paper examines three categories of laws and policies that attend to individuals who use drugs under our country's new, and purportedly public-health-centric, approach: (1) laws that increase surveillance of certain drugs or those who use them; (2) the criminalization and civil punishment of the symptoms or behaviors related to drug use; and (3) laws that decrease access to treatment and harm reduction programs. Our assessment of these policies demonstrates that the War on Drugs is not over. It has merely been retooled, recalibrated, and reframed. The "New" Drug War may be concealed with public-health-promoting rhetoric, but it is largely an insidious re-entrenchment of the country's longstanding, punitive approach to drug use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper will attempt to depict the importance of meaningful co-operation in preventing and interdicting economically motivated crime and misconduct in Sri Lanka while exploring the challenges faced by the state, its bureaucracy, extremist threat, war on drugs and anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative and secondary data. Findings: While mechanisms to introduce legislation and implement the national actions plan on combating bribery and corruption will add significant value to the entire system, Sri Lanka will need to improve co-operation among domestic and international agencies to overcome the challenges. For domestic co-operation educating the bureaucracy is essential in this regard who would take a central role in advising the policymakers. Originality/value: Sri Lankan perspective has not been discussed on challenges faced by the state, its bureaucracy, extremist threat, war on drugs and AML/CFT mechanisms. Paper was presented at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive understanding of the roles and functions of ASEAN's human rights regime by building on widely documented, consistent findings relating to the purpose of the association and the nature of its human rights institutions. In particular, the paper starts by emphasizing that, despite continuing debate over the nature and achievements/failures of the regional grouping, scholarship tends to converge on the two important aspects: ASEAN's normative framework and its long-standing practice of 'quiet diplomacy' are designed to reassure incumbent governments weary of unwanted interference in internal affairs; and regional human rights institutions are primarily ASEAN bodies. These findings are formulated as assumptions guiding the analysis of the association's human rights rhetoric and practice, which centers on the evolution of intergovernmental consensus, the role of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in advancing this consensus, and an assessment of ASEAN responses to gross violations perpetrated or supported by governing elites. This latter examination details regional responses to the 2014 military coup in Thailand, Philippines' brutal and largely extrajudicial 'war on drugs', the Rohingya genocide, and the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and ensuing violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug overdoses are the number one preventable death in the United States. In 2022, over 109,000 people died as a result of a drug overdose. The rise in drug overdose deaths has corresponded with the US government's neoliberal turn, which refuses to intervene in markets, expands the security state, and individualizes social issues. In this paper, we argue that this crisis is the result of state violence. More specifically, the state set the framework for responding to the crisis with the War on Drugs that began in the 1980s. The opioid crisis emerged due to the state deregulating the pharmaceutical industry, leading to the distribution of opioids across the country, but that were disproportionately distributed to the Appalachian region. When the state finally did respond, its response further entrenched criminalization as the state's approach left a vacuum of people addicted to opioids forced to turn to the illegal heroin and fentanyl drug markets that exacerbated death rates further. Finally, the state continues to largely ignore and demonize harm reduction alternatives in lieu of expanding the prison industrial complex further. This, we argue, is state violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A range of civil society organisations (CSOs) such as drug user groups, non-governmental/third sector organisations and networks of existing organisations, seek to shape the development of drugs policy at national and international levels. However, their capacity to do so is shaped by the contexts in which they operate nationally and internationally. The aim of this paper is to explore the lived experience of civil society participation in these contexts, both from the perspective of CSOs engaged in harm reduction advocacy, and the institutions they engage with, in order to inform future policy development. Methods: This paper is based on the presentations and discussions from a workshop on 'Civil Society Involvement in Drug Policy hosted by the Correlation - European Harm Reduction Network at the International Society for the Study of Drugs Policy (ISSDP) annual conference in Paris, 2019. In the aftermath of the workshop, the authors analysed the papers and discussions and identified the key themes arising to inform CSI in developing future harm reduction policy and practice. Results: Civil society involvement (CSI) in policy decision-making and implementation is acknowledged as an important benefit to representative democracy. Yet, the accounts of CSOs demonstrate the challenges they experience in seeking to shape the contested field of drug policy. Negotiating the complex workings of political institutions, often in adversarial and heavily bureaucratic environments, proved difficult. Nonetheless, an increase in structures which formalised and resourced CSI enabled more meaningful participation at different levels and at different stages of policy making. Conclusions: Civil society spaces are colonised by a broad range of civil society actors lobbying from different ideological standpoints including those advocating for a 'drug free world' and those advocating for harm reduction. In these competitive arena, it may be difficult for harm reduction orientated CSOs to influence the policy process. However, the current COVID-19 public health crisis clearly demonstrates the benefits of partnership between CSOs and political institutions to address the harm reduction needs of people who use drugs. The lessons drawn from our workshop serve to inform all partners on this pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the cinema of the US-Mexican border in the context of an escalating drug war. It looks at movies released since the early 1980s and argues that Hollywood has supplied a large number of cinematic images of the 'war on drugs' that has more helped shape wider political and strategic debates. Using insights from strategic analysis, this paper seeks to show how cinema has represented the conflict between drug cartels, the Mexican state as well as various US security agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and DEA. The paper explores how these cinematic depictions straddle national boundaries and have evolved from being an extension of the western border genre in the 1980s into a more recent phase of action and war movies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drugs have been used by many farmers for the treatment of most infectious diseases in chicken regardless of their residue effects to human health if proper management has not adhered. This paper focuses on finding out the common chicken diseases, their prevalence, drugs used for treatment, and their residue implication in the chicken products and by-products. A systematic literature-review was used to synthesis the information from soft and hard copy sources of information. In this paper, it was noted that different infectious diseases were affecting chicken in Tanzania and other countries including Newcastle (Prevalence 7-90% per flock), Infectious bursal disease (Prevalence 7-100% per flock), Fowl Cholera (Prevalence 1-60% per flock), and Fowl Typhoid (Prevalence 0-20% per flock). As a remedy, drugs such as Amprolium, oxytetracycline, and sulphanilamide were used for treatment which could prompt antibiotic residues in chicken products and by-products. The antibiotic residue was reported in meat, eggs, liver, and kidneys of the chicken which are considered edible to a human thus posing public health challenges. In this regard, there is a need to create awareness to the farmers on the proper use of the drugs. In this case, the understanding of the withdrawal period for the applied drugs can minimize the risk of drug residues in chicken products [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardboard publishers (editoriales cartoneras) are small, independent publishers linked by the recovered cardboard that covers their books, a commitment to the promotion of local authors, and a drive to make literature accessible. This cultural movement, whose actors often form part of broader social movements, has spread across Latin America and beyond, with other 250 active collectives. Drawing on ethnography conducted with some of Mexico's thirty cartoneras, and literary analysis of their texts, this paper contributes to debates on violence and public space in the context of the brutal Mexican "war on drugs". Dialoguing with a body of scholarship spanning from Setha Low's pioneering urban anthropology to Jacques Rancière's art theory, we argue that cartoneras might be considered "public‐ers", in that their book‐making labor involves the production not just of books, but of new social relations, communities, and publics. By analyzing aesthetic materials in relation to the social contexts in which they are embedded, we demonstrate that decisions to denounce violence and perform its alternatives on the written page, and in the public plaza, are inseparable and intertwined cultural forms of action that create affective encounters, contact zones, and spaces of dissensus in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on my experience of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Indian Himalayas to study the illegal hashish trade in the region. The work required me to spend time with cannabis cultivators, dealers, drug tourists and law enforcement officials. My informants would regularly engage in the consumption of narcotic substances. A significant part of building close and durable relationships with informants was getting intoxicated with them. Dealer and cultivator groups were generally tightly knit, and an outsider was looked upon with mistrust. I found that consuming narcotics with informants would generally induce candid conversations, which meant a good amount of data coming my way. This paper analyses the social dynamics of such interactions and discusses the ethical ambiguity inherent in such a process of data collection. Although there have been a number of insightful ethnographic studies on narcotic substances, there have been surprisingly few studies addressing the ethnographer's experience and potential risks involved. Through a mainly reflexive examination of my fieldwork, this paper is an account of how the ethnographic method frequently pushes the fieldworker to transgress ethical, psychological, professional, social and personal boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to illuminate the diverging approaches to marijuana-related drug enforcement at the federal and state levels in the USA, which have facilitated a boom in the US medical cannabis industry (i.e. the "Green Rush"). It further sheds light on how the USA' aggressive extraterritorial approach to anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement might simultaneously suppress the banking of cannabis-related businesses in Jamaica due to the lingering fear of de-risking. Design/methodology/approach: An international and comparative legal and policy analysis was conducted of the nexus among shifting drug enforcement policies, AML laws and the banking of cannabis-related businesses. Findings: This study found that the constitutional relationship between the US federal government and states has created a de facto comparative advantage for the US medical cannabis-related businesses that benefit from limited access to financial services. This was found to pose far-reaching implications for the banking and development of the Jamaican cannabis sector due to the dependence of the country's financial institutions on correspondent banking relationships with the US banks that are regulated by federal AML statutes. Originality/value: To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to examine the extraterritorial regulatory risks to the banking of cannabis-related businesses in Jamaica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between drug-related detentions for possession or petty dealing and drug-related violence. Two theoretical mechanisms are explored: (i) when a dealer is detained, the market is disrupted, and competition increases; (ii) when a consumer is detained, other consumers are deterred and seek new dealers, generating competition among groups and, consequently, increasing violence. These hypotheses are quantitatively evaluated using geocoded data from local San Luis Potosí, Mexico markets. Results suggest a relationship between drug-related violence and detentions occurring in a nearby location. These results emphasize the inefficacy of drug law enforcement strategies for reducing violence related to illegal drug markets in local settings and open the discussion for exploring different policies to reduce violence related to organized crime and the harms associated with illegal drug consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Estudos Politicos is the property of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Revista Brasileira de Estudos Politicos) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Fentanyl and fentanyl-related analogues are the main drivers of overdose death in the USA, particularly among people who inject drugs (PWID). Despite the fact that non-Hispanic whites exhibit higher population rates of synthetic opioid mortality, overdose deaths have increased among African American and Latinos in urban areas. Yet little attention has been paid to the introduction of fentanyl among rural PWID in Puerto Rico. Methods: We conducted N = 38 in-depth interviews with PWID in rural Puerto Rico to document participants' experiences of injection drug use after the arrival of fentanyl and the strategies they implemented to manage overdose death risks. Results: Participants suggest that the arrival of fentanyl in large scale happened after Hurricane Maria in 2017; this coincided with a dramatic increase in overdose episodes and deaths. Fear of overdose deaths motivated some participants to substitute intravenous drug use for other forms of substance use or to seek MOUD. PWID that continued injection use resorted to conducting "hit tests," avoiding injecting alone, using naloxone, and employing fentanyl testing strips. Conclusions: While overdose deaths would have been higher without participants' willingness to adopt harm-reduction strategies, this paper illustrates the limits of these policies to address the current epidemic of fentanyl-related overdose deaths among this population. More studies are needed to understand how health disparities shape overdose risks for minority populations. However, major policy changes, in particular the revision of the harmful role of the War on Drugs and the termination of failed neoliberal economic policies that contribute to deaths of despair, should be addressed if we are to make a dent in this epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ceská a Slovenská Psychiatrie is the property of Czech Medical Association of JE Purkyne and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: 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. Design/methodology/approach: Personal reflection based on experience as drug user, drugs worker and drug user organiser. Findings: 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. Practical implications: 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. Originality/value: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two South African professional women were early advocates of cannabis decriminalisation during the second half of the twentieth century. Frances Ames (1920-2002) was a neurologist and psychiatrist based at the Medical School of the University of Cape Town. Helen Suzman (1917-2009) represented the Progressive Party for 36 years as an opposition member of parliament. This article documents their individual -- later allied -- activities and arguments, initially in relation to National Party (apartheid) drug control measures and then into the democratic era of the African National Congress. A social history approach reveals continuities and changes in the cannabis policy rationales of successive governments and the challenges made to these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise and fall of the Administrative Bureau of Prohibited Drugs in 1920s Shanghai. It identifies the factors associated with the endeavours of the central government to experiment with establishing a Bureau dedicated to regulating refined drugs and the reasons why the Bureau operated for just about two years. It argues that the concerns regarding the widespread of refined drugs and the expected profits of regulating the business pushed the central government to experiment establishing the Bureau. Moreover, this experiment was a tool with which the Beiyang government aimed to centralise its authorities on the issue of drug control. However, the room for manoeuvring the Bureau was limited, mainly because of the resilience of the drug economy and the politicised regulations. Struggling in the narrow space between the colonial powers, the merchant groups, and the local authorities acting under the influence of warlords, the Bureau was doomed to be short-lived. Its history reveals the resilience of both licit and illicit drug economy and the power struggles that resulted from efforts to regulate refined drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conjuntura Austral is the property of Conjuntura Austral and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Policies based on prohibition and repression to fight the war on drugs have largely failed in a variety of contexts. However, incentive-based policies may also fail and have unintended negative consequences if policymakers do not properly anticipate behavioral reactions. This is an particularly important concern in the case of policies announced prior to their implementation. In this paper, we show that a naive and untimely policy announcement generated an unprecedented escalation in cocaine production in Colombia, offsetting almost 20 years and billions of dollars of U.S.-backed efforts to stop drug production and cartel action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of drug quality control methods using non‐invasive methods, in particular Raman spectroscopy, is an important task in the pharmaceutical industry. This paper presents a new approach to the analysis of drug spectra obtained with portable Raman spectrometers. It represents a normalized relative error distribution analysis (nReDA). The proposed method uses the Pearson residuals distribution statistics and, compared with the correlation method, allows increasing the screening sensitivity to foreign components that are not contained in the original sample, with the same resistance to changes in the noise distribution and the peak ratios. On the basis of the statistical data, the nReDA in some way is similar to the techniques such as principal component analysis, however, it requires a considerably less spectra to build a representative model and is suitable for comparing Raman spectra, having a noise other than the Gaussian one. The paper shows the prospects of the algorithm for creating a spectral library and solving the problem of transferring Raman libraries to a large number of spectrometers of the same type. Features: Drug authentication.Detection of impurities in drug samples.Normalized relative error distribution analysis (nReDA)) used for investigation of obtained drug spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing consensus that acknowledges the failings of the prohibitionist 'war on drugs' model of international drug policy. Concomitant drug policy reform literatures have been characterized by the advocacy of policy pluralism, experimentation, evidence gathering/evaluation and the avoidance of drug fetishization. This paper builds upon these literatures and explores some of the complexities of drug policy pluralization, including challenges associated with drug policy asymmetries and repatriation and the, largely unexplored, potentials of deploying drug policies in combination. It argues that the drug policy reform literature has tended to favour evaluation of policy alternatives over discussion of their geographical deployment under a more plural international policy regime. It considers models to inform the deployment of plural drug policies. Conceptually this paper draws on geographical literatures and attempts to rethink drug markets and drug policy reform in geographically sensitive, regional and relational ways, highlighting scalar and relational challenges to drug policy pluralization. It concludes by outlining an extensive set of research priorities that speak directly to the challenges identified through this geographical lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]