Rethinking drug laws: theory, history, politics (Seddon, 2023) provides an intellectual invitation to scholars working and studying in a variety of academic disciplines relating to (illegal) drug control. It draws on Seddon’s long-standing and valuable engagement with the challenge of drug policymaking and showcases the interdisciplinary breadth of his scholarship combining legal, historical, social sciences and political perspectives. In line with Matthews’s (2009) call to move beyond “so-what” criminology, Seddon adeptly links theory, history and politics to deliver a coherent three-pronged challenge to prevailing views about international drug law and reform. Having bodies of “established” knowledge overturned can be an uncomfortable experience and it is a testament to Seddon’s skills that he provides three such experiences in this book in a manner which engages and intrigues the reader, rather than alienating them. The clearly articulated ideas are on the grand scale and will provide inspiration to anyone interested in breaking down existing constructions of the drugs “problem” in the search for new perspectives.
The first challenge Seddon addresses is the manner in which we have tended to conceptualise drug markets and their regulation as separate, offering instead an alternative depiction of the interplay between markets and regulation via a complex, networked and political construction of exchangespace. The second seeks to “deconstruct the origin story” (Seddon, 2023, p. 3) of international drug control, removing the “constraints” of a colonial Western perspective and reimagining events through a foregrounding of the influence of China. The third counters the tendency, amongst academics at least, to privilege the expert, evidence-based opinion over more ideological political contexts, emphasising the important role that politics has to play in this complex social issue. Each of these challenges are subjected to Seddon’s scholarly critique across three distinct parts of the book, and it seems likely that different sections will hold the central appeal depending on the existing academic interests of the reader. The true power of Seddon’s overarching narrative, however, emerges from reading the book as a whole and understanding its repositioning of:
the regulation of colonial capitalism and the regulation of drugs as two sides of the same coin; and
the role China has played and will play going forward in regulating both.
Seddon opens with a reflection on the divide between social and medical sciences in terms of researching drugs and, specifically, in terms of theorising why people use them and how they should best be governed. Increasingly, the field of drugs is perceived to be full of “over-simplistic categorisations and binaries” (Askew and Williams, 2021: 2) such as medical vs nonmedical, legal vs illegal, and recreational vs dependent. A call for joined up thinking is thus very welcome, particularly given the emphasis Seddon places on creating rich, critical and nuanced theoretical tools, developed by and relevant to actors from a cross-section of academic disciplines. Driving the point home, Seddon draws on Einstein’s theory of space–time (the idea that space and time are not actually separate, but instead form a single continuum) to introduce the idea of Exchangespace: a refreshing conceptualisation of markets and regulation “not as separate realms, but rather as two sides of the same coin” (Seddon, 2023, p. 31). By definition, markets are essentially a set of regulations governing trade. If regulations for drug markets are based on prohibition, then they also determine how markets will be structured. Here, Seddon provides the example of Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCs) which exist as a response to working within the loopholes of prohibitive drug policies; remove the regulations and CSCs would likely be abandoned for alternative models. This reasoning, deceptively simple as it may seem, represents a major departure from our normative understanding of prohibition as a way of eliminating pre-existing drug markets, styling it instead as just one of many ways to regulate them.
In the second part of the book, a highlight for me given my own interest in the historical development of international drug policy, Seddon presents a detailed argument that current understanding of drug prohibition is limited by its Western centric focus. Again, the essence of Seddon’s argument is simple and rational. He describes a misguided tendency to construct prohibition as an American project and to perceive America as the driving force behind both its introduction and its future development on the global stage. While well-established as such, even within the minds of many academic experts, in reality the picture is much more complex with China having played a prominent role in the introduction of prohibition, for example, at the Shanghai Opium Commission in 1909, and likely to play an increasingly important role going forwards. Such a realignment or decolonialisation of the historical context of international drug control is not particularly surprising or controversial – as with many areas of knowledge, the dominant Western perspective is but one part of the story (Aas, 2013). The real value here lies in Seddon’s demonstration of how this adjustment of focus leads to a nuanced understanding of the links between an emerging global strategy of prohibiting some drugs and international trade agreements more generally. Following this line of thinking the wider links between the regulation of colonial capitalism and the regulation of drug markets snap into focus and present new ways of imagining the future of drug control and potential for reform.
In a similar vein, the final part of the book deconstructs another commonly assumed position that ideological political or individual beliefs have no place in considering the challenges presented by drugs, but rather regulatory efforts should be underpinned by evidence and left to the experts. To be clear, Seddon does not suggest that evidence and experts have no place in discussions about drugs, but rather outlines for us what might be missed by confusing the value of expert evidence with the need to keep all other voices out of the debate. As Seddon reminds us, drugs and the ways we have chosen to control them are tied up with complex social, political and personal inequalities connected to race, deprivation and the right to personal freedom. As it currently stands, these connections remain relatively underexplored in research terms. What if, Seddon suggests, the importance of politics, social norms and personal beliefs were to be recognised alongside academic expertise as a valuable part of drug control debates? Perhaps these social and political dimensions of drugs might then be more fully explored contributing to a better path going forwards.
While I was reading this book and having some of my own assumptions challenged, I kept thinking of Bacchi’s (2009) “what is the problem represented to be” framework which I have often used as a tool for trying to see complex issues from different perspectives. Although Seddon does not draw specifically on Bacchi, each part of the book examines a commonly held truth, explores how this may have constrained or limited our overall understanding of the issue, and suggests that we widen our focus. This is important work in its own right, but is immediately eclipsed by Seddon’s ability to follow through on that suggestion and sketch out the bigger shifts in thinking that might stem from such an approach. In the concluding chapter, these shifts in thinking are stitched together to offer a more hopeful picture where the increasing prominence of China will lead to new possibilities for reform. One suggestion provided here is that a more authoritarian leadership of global drug policy might result in greater international conformity on matters of drug policy. On this point about how the ideas expressed in the book might link to drug reform in the future, I do not (yet) find myself convinced, but I am thinking about it and very much enjoying the process of seeing old challenges from fresh perspectives. This book will be savoured by anyone with an in-depth interest and enquiring mind in the field of drug regulation.
