Speaker
Spotlight
Dr Theo Di Castri
DDr Theo Di Castri is a Junior Research Fellow and Director of Studies at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, where he teaches and supports students in the History and Philosophy of Science. His work sits at the crossroads of the history of social science, drug policy, and critical pedagogy. Theo explores how ideas about risk, prevention and behaviour have shaped science and society over time.
On Saturday 28 March (1pm-3pm), join Theo and his colleagues Bisi Akintoye, Kojo Koram and Shayla Schlossenberg, a series of hands-on interactive activities we will imagine what futures beyond drug prohibition could look like here in Cambridge. Come and hear from a criminologist, a historian of science, a critical legal scholar and a drug policy reform activist about how they are thinking about (post-)prohibition in their own research/praxis
"If we are to imagine alternatives to prohibition, we need to widen the scope of our analysis to appreciate the full scale of the problems we are confronting"
The Post-Prohibition research network spans history, sociology, anthropology, public health, criminology, education policy, and activism - how do you approach the idea of “post-prohibition” differently from traditional criminal justice or policy perspectives?
I think the idea of moving beyond prohibition remains unthinkable for many working from more traditional criminal justice or policy perspectives. Even for those who are open to thinking about alternatives, I think they still tend to think in quite narrow terms: in single policies, or singles pieces of legislation—how do we decriminalize X drug? How do we legalize and regulate drugs Y and Z?
The idea behind the Post-Prohibition Research network is to bring together a broader range of disciplinary perspectives to think more holistically about drugs, drug policy and the kinds of problems that currently surround them.
Whether that’s delving into the anthropology and sociology of stigma and taboo to understand the deeper cultural processes that have helped justify and sustain the prohibition of drugs over time; or reckoning with the historical conditions that have given rise to the complex and entrenched patchworks of criminal governance that currently regulate illicit drug markets; or engaging with the lived experiences of those living on the front lines of the war on drugs, our approach is much more interdisciplinary and intersectional than traditional perspectives.
In the history drug prevention, how have past ideas about risk and behaviour shaped current drug policies and what might that tell us about imagining alternatives to prohibition?
What are the problems we seek to prevent and how should we go about preventing them?
These are not purely technical questions. They are profoundly political. Studying the history of drug prevention has made this much clear to me.
In general, I think the tendency has been to frame drug use as a problem at the level of the individual, the family and the immediate community (e.g. schools, neighbourhoods, councils). This makes it easy to represent the problems that currently surround drugs and drug policy as technical problems that can be managed by psychologists, teachers, parents, and local actors in the criminal justice system.
While it is certainly important to consider factors at these more localised scales, too often the historical, structural and political dimensions of drugs/drug policy falls out of the picture. If we are to imagine alternatives to prohibition, we need to widen the scope of our analysis to appreciate the full scale of the problems we are confronting. Doing so makes it difficult to ignore the fact that drugs throw up inherently political problems that ultimately demand political solutions.
The Post-Prohibition network brings together educators and activists from around the world. What’s one insight from your international collaborations that has surprised you most?
Working with international collaborators has only deepened my conviction of the importance of taking the specificities of place into account when thinking about alternatives to drug prohibition.
For example, through the network, I’ve come to learn about the ways in which the stigma associated with alcohol use in Southern India has intersected with caste stigmas, or about alternative ways of understanding pleasure and prohibition in different parts of the Islamic world. Just as prohibition has never been uniformly enforced or experienced, neither will whatever comes after prohibition.
Perhaps more than a surprising insight, this awareness raises an important question or challenge: how do we leave room for a plurality of alternatives and experiments to take shape in response to the specificities of local contexts while understanding these different contexts in relation to one another within a larger, global framework?
How can historical and cultural perspectives help communities, like those here in Cambridge, think more creatively and constructively about drug policy reform?
Historical and cultural perspectives invite us to recognize the contingency of our current drug policies and to realise that things can be—and have been—done in different ways. Drugs have not always been governed by carceral and military means. Different cultures at different points of time have found myriad ways to relate to and to regulate these substances in different ways.
That said, the comparative perspective afforded by historical and cultural approaches also invite us to think critically about the specificities of our own times and places. The ways in which pre-hispanic cultures engaged psychoactive plants, for example, cannot necessarily be cut and past to the hyper-capitalist, hyper-militarized societies we inhabit at present. I think this recognition opens up more room for thinking creatively and critically about drug policy alternatives.
From your research, what do you see as the biggest barrier to moving beyond prohibitionist frameworks in public discourse and policy?
The fact is that drugs remain a taboo topic in the UK—which is ironic, because of the many countries I’ve lived in, I think this is the one where illicit drug use seems most pervasive and normalised. My impression is that the only permissible conversation about drugs in the UK is a narrow one about personal health risks and individual self-management.
There’s a fear that if we talk to people about drugs beyond this predefined script, they are somehow going to be inspired to try them. This, in the age of the internet when anyone can pick up their phone and order drugs to their doorstep at the click of a button if they so choose!
People know about and will experiment with drugs whether we like it or not. By ignoring or shutting down the conversation, we are not protecting them. Rather, we’re leaving them to the mercy of an illicit and violent market that most certainly does not have their wellbeing in mind.
In my opinion, the possibility of articulating alternative frameworks and, more importantly, of building the democratic political will to actually put them into motion them will remain out of reach so long as the topic of drugs remains taboo.
If you could sketch one practical step toward a post-prohibition future that local communities might start with tomorrow, what would it be?
Start talking and start asking questions. Approach this problem as a democratic citizen, not as a problem that ‘the experts’ will solve for you. Of course, medical, psychological and pedagogical expertise are valuable resources that we can and should engage when thinking about alternatives to prohibition. But it’s also important to recognise the ways in which these forms of expertise have, both historically and at present, helped uphold the prohibitionist status quo.
It’s also a matter of reaching beyond the domains of the expertise that have conventionally governed the problem of drugs and engaging knew forms of knowledge and asking different questions.
- What is your own relationship with psychoactive substances - and that includes, caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, psychotropic prescription medications?
- What do you know about the history of drug policy in the UK or elsewhere?
- Have you ever thought about how and why the East India Company became the world’s first international drug cartel?
- Have you ever listened to the experiences and perspectives of other drug users? traffickers? producers?
- What do you know about how experiments around legalization or decriminalization are going in places like Uruguay, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, the US or Canada?
- Have you asked yourself whether the safety of your community comes at the expense of the safety of communities elsewhere?
I think that’s probably a good place to start.
"It’s also important to recognise the ways in which these forms of expertise have, both historically and at present, helped uphold the prohibitionist status quo."
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