ACRÒNIMS

through international

drug prohibition and

local interventions

Introduction

Over the course of the twentieth century the structures and organisations established in support of international drug policy have proliferated in num- ber as well as in complexity. The major conventions and treaties behind this development, elaborated with the explicit aim of repressing all non-medical or non-scientific production, distribution, possession and consumption of drugs, provide the foundation for the existence of a worldwide system of drug prohibition supervised by the United Nations (Nadelman 1990; Hartnoll 1998; Levine 2003).2 In the real world, however, national drug policies are neither uniform nor static but represent a rather variegated spectrum with marked differences in underlying philosophies, formulated goals, legislation and interventions; and as suggested by Reinarman & Levine (1997) the va- rieties of drug prohibition can be seen as a long continuum, extending from the most criminalised and punitive to the most decriminalised and regulated forms. Drug policy operates at three distinct levels: the international, the national and the local; but as stated by Wodak (2006), in the end ‘all drug politics is local’.

In this chapter attention is paid to the local level – the level at which local politicians chart the course of public interventions and settle expenditure, where street-level bureaucrats (e.g. the police and professional practitioners engaged in the drug treatment field) translate policies into practice (Lipsky 1980). ‘Drug policy live’ will therefore always be an expression of peculiar- ity, as it is enacted in response to uncountable unique sets of conditions and constraints of a particular local community; thus local drug policy can be

seen as a prism through which international and national resolutions are reflected and enacted (Hartnoll 1998; Hunt & Barker 1999).

The subject of local drug policy will be approached with a focus on drug scenes as sites of public intervention and control, and in more detail by exploring the local drug scene landscape in a Danish urban setting that has been subject to regulation and intervention for almost forty years. The main objective is to describe and analyse the way in which local citizens – in this instance poly-drug and methadone users – perceive, adjust to and react to interventions based on law enforcement, medical substitution treatment and harm reduction services.3

Intervention deals with people shaped by their time and place, as pointed out by Agar, who argues with specific reference to the drug field: “… be- coming an addict and becoming an ex-addict follow different trajectories in different places at different times. The endorphins are the same, but the biographies and histories and languages are different. What makes it hap- pen and makes it stop are local more than chemical.” (Agar 2006:248, italics original).

As an anthropologist and a dedicated fieldworker, Agar has persistently called attention to the fact that to understand, explain and effectively inter- vene in aspects regarding problematic drug use it is crucial to know how and why something goes seriously wrong for so many in some social clusters and not in others. In his view, this requires an intimate and first-hand knowledge of the drug-using world: “Its basic premise is, if you’re interested in some corner of the world, you climb inside it and spend time with its inhabitants. Another premise is, you look for connections, among the pieces of that world and between that world and the rest of the city, the country, the planet.” (ibid.: 18). In line with Agar, I will argue that to understand drug policy, its effects and impact, it must be investigated in its local setting with an eye to everyday practices and interactions between local authorities, street-level practitioners and drug users.

In the major part of the drug research literature, the voices and percep- tions of drug users are generally neglected or completely excluded, and in studies on drug and control policy they are almost totally absent as active and reflexive subjects (Hunt & Barker 1999, Dahl 2004). However, quali- tative research and in particular ethnographically based studies aiming to

understand the nexus of meaning and context (Agar 1997; 2006) proceed on the assumption that the life stories, subjective experiences and points of view of drug users are relevant and valuable sources, both for research which addresses the micro-setting of drug use and intervention, and research which addresses the macro-setting of policy and social and economic structures and their impact on individual and group drug behaviour and practices (Grund 1993; Waterston 1993; Bourgois 1995; Bourgois et al. 1997). Neglecting or excluding the perspectives of drug users has been considered a manifestation of the social order and an expression of how dominant perspectives over- rule the perspectives and experiences of the subjects of intervention instead of appreciating them as sources of information for policymakers to develop more pragmatic and efficient strategies and interventions in deference to the needs of users (Bourgois 2002; Asmussen & Jöhncke 2004; Agar 2006). With the priority placed on repression and criminalisation of illicit drugs in preference to public health, Danish drug policy operates within a prohibi- tionist framework. These priorities are reflected at ground level, but display variegated local strategies and manifestations, as two recent Danish studies on the policing of drugs and drug scenes in Odense (Grytnes 2003) and Copenhagen (Frantzsen 2005) have demonstrated.

This study adds yet another element to the knowledge of Danish drug policy at local level. It focuses on how local solutions to local problems on the one hand are performed in accordance with international drug control policy, and on the other have recourse to solutions and practices conflicting with the ideals of international prohibitionist and abstinence ideology. In this sense, the changing and uneasy balance of local control and social and public health interventions provided by the discretion of street-level bureau- crats (Lipsky 1980) mirrors the ‘ambivalent balance between repression and welfare’ embedded in national Danish drug policy.4

The street-level perspective of this chapter is primarily informed by drug and methadone users’ experiences with and perceptions of drug control and intervention strategies. The chapter is structured around cases depicting drug scenes in various inner-city locations customarily frequented by drug and methadone users with a focus on the ‘open drug scenes’. Combined, these empirical cases are aimed at providing insight into what constitute the main settings and activity spheres in the lives of socially marginalised drug and

methadone users who spend some or almost all of their time ‘on the streets’ and in low-threshold facilities. These cases will serve as a background for looking into how ‘local drug policy in action’, defined as attempts to regulate, prevent and suppress illegal drugs and drug use, has developed historically and how it tends to reflect conflicting interests between different players and authoritative bodies at local, national and international level.