Drug Use and Drug Policy in a Prohibition Regime

Psychoactive drugs are an especially rich topic for criminological scholarship. The topic is inherently multidisciplinary, involving neuroscience, psychology, cultural anthropology, history, microeconomics, and moral philosophy. And drug policy instruments extend beyond the usual arsenal (special and general deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and persuasion) to include social work, medicine, psychotherapy, social support groups, drug maintenance clinics, and mass media campaigns. In order to cover such a vast topic in a limited space, it is necessary to be selective, making some general observations and pointing the reader to good secondary sources. We focus primarily on the currently illicit psychoactives, giving little attention to alcohol or tobacco. We trust that every educated reader will be familiar with the arguments for analyzing licits and illicits together, and we assure skeptics that we will not neglect the core question of how prohibition shapes drug behavior and drug outcomes.