Rethinking Drug Policy Metrics to Move Beyond the War on Drugs

Abstract

Chapter 14 integrates critical views from across the domains of criminal justice, human rights, health, and development to suggest new drug policy metrics. It reveals how traditional drug policy indicators that reinforce the securitized War on Drugs discourse have justified and sustained the International Drug Control Regime since the 1960s. Rather than proving the International Drug Control Regime’s success, such traditional indicators have exposed how severe the policy has been, for example by counting the number of people incarcerated for drug-related crimes, without showing its impact. The chapter thus proposes alternative goals, targets, and indicators to overcome the current limbo situation, better track the effects of a progressive drug policy, and shift to a more holistic drug policy paradigm.