Drug policy and the public good: A summary of the second edition

The second edition of Drug Policy and the Public Good presents up-to-date evidence relating to the development of drug policy at local, national, and international levels. The book explores both illicit drug use and nonmedical use of prescription medications from a public health perspective. The core of the book is a critical review of the scientific evidence in five areas of drug policy: 1) primary prevention programs in schools and other settings; 2) treatment interventions and harm reduction approaches; 3) attempts to control the supply of illicit drugs, including drug interdiction and law enforcement; 4) penal approaches, decriminalization and other alternatives; and 5) control of the legal market through prescription drug regimes. It also discusses the trend toward legalization of some psychoactive substances in some countries and the need for a new approach to drug policy that is evidence-based, realistic, and coordinated. The accumulated evidence provides important information about effective and ineffective policies. Shifting the emphasis toward a public health approach should reduce the extent of illicit drug use, prevent the escalation of new epidemics, and avoid the unintended consequences arising from the marginalization of drug users through severe criminal penalties

Organised crime and international aid subversion: evidence from Colombia and Afghanistan

Scholarly attempts to explain aid subversion in post-conflict contexts frame the challenge in terms of corrupt practices and transactions disconnected from local power struggles. Also, they assume a distinction between organised crime and the state. This comparative analysis of aid subversion in Colombia and Afghanistan reveals the limits of such an approach. Focusing on relations that anchor organised crime within local political, social and economic processes, we demonstrate that organised crime is dynamic, driven by multiple motives, and endogenous to local power politics. Better understanding of governance arrangements around the organised crime-conflict nexus which enable aid subversion is therefore required

Power balances, transnational elites, and local economic governance: The political economy of development in Medellín

Applying a non-linear political economy analysis of power balances, institutional mechanisms, and elite structures, this study sheds light on the characteristics of Medellín’s economic development since the early 2000s. Elites with minimal technological capabilities and interests in promoting the advancement of transnational capitalism have successfully secured access to sources of power. These conditions (re)produce neoliberal logics of local governance that focus on economic growth in sectors with perceived global comparative advantages and on sustaining the particular power balances in Medellín’s political settlement. This has led to failures of generating positive forward and backward linkages for productivity growth of local firms, a local labour market marked by low wages and high employment elasticities, and large income inequalities. The local governance model that perpetuates productivity and inequality problems of the city is adopted as an opportunistic discourse of Medellín’s transnationalised capitalist elite in the larger neoliberal context of Colombia’s polity and economic policy agenda. In the absence of structural reforms targeting low wages and incentivising firms to develop technological capabilities, Medellín’s low productivity and high inequality problems are likely to persist