Authors: Alan Brennan, John Holmes, Yang Meng and Robin Purshouse (University of Sheffield)

This appendix is the second part of the response from the University of Sheffield (Shiefield Alcohol Research Group) to a recent report by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) critiquing the Shieffield Alcohol Policy Model which applies to the effectiveness of minimum pricing.

As the ASI report contained two sections, a pair of essays on our work and a more technical appendix, this response follows a similar format.

Author: European Union

The new EU drug strategy for 2013–20 was adopted on 7 December 2012.  The framework, aim and objectives of the Strategy will serve as a basis for two consecutive four-year EU Drugs Action plans. The strategy directs and requires collective EU action in international forums, such as the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the UN General Assembly, and the strategy will have an important role in EC funding priorities. The strategy sets out the need for evaluation of outcomes achieved in supply side enforcement as well as demand reduction. “Risk and harm reduction” is a notable feature of the strategy and the strategy has a focus on HIV, HCV, and overdose. The strategy has more emphasis on human rights than the previous strategy and seeks to encourage civil society participation in policy, including the involvement of young people and people who use drugs.

Author: Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Despite the lack of evidence that more punitive drug laws significantly deter drug use, criminalisation remains the primary weapon in the war on drugs. But using the criminal justice system to solve a public health problem has proven not only ineffective, but also socially corrosive. It promotes stigmatisation and discrimination, the burden of which is largely carried by already marginalised or vulnerable populations, many of whom the policy is nominally designed to protect.

Author: Transform Drug Policy Foundation

The growing costs of the war on drugs – particularly for the worst affected producer and transit countries – have now reached a crisis point that is driving an increasingly high-level and mainstream debate on drug policy and law reform. But while there is a growing consensus that current approaches to drug control have been ineffective or actively counterproductive, there is less agreement on how these shortcomings should be addressed.