A Brief Overview of Drugs Regulations: Harm Reduction or Law Enforcement?

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: Masters Degree, London School of Economics (Social Policy), course: Illegal Drugs and Their Control: Theory, Policy and Practice, language: English, abstract: Harm reduction refers to policies, strategies and practices that aim primarily to reduce the harms associated with the use of psychoactive drugs in people unable or unwilling to stop (Hyshka et al., 2012). On the other hand, Law enforcement broadly refers to any system by which some members of community act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, punishing persons who violate the rules and values governing that society (Beletsky et al., 2013; MacCoun and Reuter, 2001). In discussing whether the principles harm reduction or law enforcement should be the focal point for drug policy, this essay will evaluate evidence across different geopolitical contexts from the lens of Laceys (1998) efficiency/inefficiency theory, which posits that interventions should only be deployed if their positive outcomes outweigh their negative effects. It will argue that the amalgamation of both approaches as suggested by Beyrer (2012: 1) could be productive, but delivery at ground level could be challenging (Hyshka et al., 2012). In viewing both approaches as a polarised image of Beauty and the Beast, as Wilcox (2005: 255) would say, this essay will argue that their union in drug policy could yield different slices of realities across geopolitical spaces that could undermine efficiency, because what reflects on drug regulation is politically determined (Stevens, 2011) as is what counts as efficiency.