Strands: Drug Use and Drug Policy

Explore drug use and policies strands

Policy analysis

Dr Helen Beckett-Wilson has been researching drugs and drug policy since 2002. From early beginnings in Home Office Research on Young People’s drug use, to criminal justice interventions for people whose drug use is connected to criminality, through to more recent research on cannabis policy and the harms of prohibition. Her latest project with Dr Lindsey Metcalf analyses the medical (in)justice of prescribed cannabis against a backdrop of prohibitionist hegemony. Publications include:

Taylor, S., Beckett Wilson, H., Barrett, G., Jamieson, J., Grindrod. L. (2018), ‘Cannabis use in an English community: acceptance, anxieties and the liminality of drug prohibition.’ Contemporary Drug Problems 45(4): 401-424.

Beckett Wilson, H., Taylor, S., Barrett, G., Jamieson, J., Grindrod. L. (2017), ‘Propagating the Haze? Community and professional perceptions of cannabis cultivation and the impacts of prohibition.’ International Journal of Drug Policy 48: 72-80.

Beckett Wilson, Helen (2014), ‘Criminal justice? Using a social capital theory to evaluate probation-managed drug policy.’ Probation Journal 61(1) 60:78.

Rethinking Heroin

Dr Steve Wakeman has been actively researching the use of heroin in marginalised communities in England’s North West since 2012. The results of this work can be found in:

Wakeman, S. (2016). The moral economy of heroin in ‘austerity Britain’. Critical Criminology, 24(3): 363-377.

Wakeman, S. (2015). Prescribing heroin for addictions: Some untapped potentials and unanswered questions. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 15(5): 578-593.

Wakeman, S. (2014). Fieldwork, biography and emotion: Doing criminological autoethnography. British Journal of Criminology, 54(5): 705-721.

Theorising drugs

The ways that drug use and drug policy are theorised and explained have important justice implications. The following publications explore this is more detail:

Wakeman, S. (2016). The moral economy of heroin in ‘austerity Britain’. Critical Criminology, 24(3): 363-377.

Beckett Wilson, Helen (2014), ‘Criminal justice? Using a social capital theory to evaluate probation-managed drug policy.’ Probation Journal 61(1) 60:78 (Journal article).