Strands: Drug Use and Drug Policy

Explore drug use and policies strands.

Policy analysis

Dr Helen Beckett-Wilson has been researching drugs and drug policy since 2002. From early beginnings in Home Office Research on Young People’s drug use, to criminal justice interventions for people whose drug use is connected to criminality, through to more recent research on cannabis policy and the harms of prohibition. Her work with the MedCan Project analyses the medical (in)justice of prescribed cannabis against a backdrop of prohibitionist hegemony.

Dr Lindsey Metcalf McGrath specialises in research around the experiences of people who need cannabis as medicine. She established the MedCan Project with Dr Helen Beckett Wilson. The first phase of the research investigated the experiences of people legally prescribed cannabis in the UK. A second phase investigates the experiences of people who (illicitly) self-medicate with cannabis.

Publications include:

• Metcalf McGrath, L. and Beckett Wilson, H. (2024) Stigmatised and stressed: UK cannabis patients living in the context of prohibition, Critical Social Policy [Online First] https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183241262777
• Beckett Wilson, H. and Metcalf McGrath, L. (2023) “It's a big added stress on top of being so ill”: The challenges facing people prescribed cannabis in the UK, International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol.122. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395923002670?via%3Dihub
• Metcalf McGrath, L. and Beckett Wilson, H. (2023) Prescribed but prohibited: UK cannabis patients face stigma and health inequalities, Everyday Society (British Sociological Association), Available at: https://es.britsoc.co.uk/prescribed-but-prohibited-uk-cannabis-patients-face-stigma-and-health-inequalities/
• Beckett Wilson, H. and Metcalf McGrath, L. (2023) Living in limbo: The experiences of UK patients who are prescribed cannabis, Volteface, Available at: https://volteface.me/experiences-of-uk-patients-cannabis/
• Taylor, S., Beckett Wilson, H., Barrett, G., Jamieson, J., Grindrod. L. (2018), ‘Cannabis use in an English community: acceptance, anxieties and the liminality of drug prohibition.’ Contemporary Drug Problems 45(4): 401-424.
• Beckett Wilson, H., Taylor, S., Barrett, G., Jamieson, J., Grindrod. L. (2017), ‘Propagating the Haze? Community and professional perceptions of cannabis cultivation and the impacts of prohibition.’ International Journal of Drug Policy 48: 72-80.
• Beckett Wilson, Helen (2014), ‘Criminal justice? Using a social capital theory to evaluate probation-managed drug policy.’ Probation Journal 61(1) 60:78.

Rethinking Heroin

Dr Steve Wakeman has been actively researching the use of heroin in marginalised communities in England’s North West since 2012. The results of this work can be found in:

• Wakeman, S. (2016). The moral economy of heroin in ‘austerity Britain’. Critical Criminology, 24(3): 363-377.
• Wakeman, S. (2015). Prescribing heroin for addictions: Some untapped potentials and unanswered questions. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 15(5): 578-593.
• Wakeman, S. (2014). Fieldwork, biography and emotion: Doing criminological autoethnography. British Journal of Criminology, 54(5): 705-721.

Theorising drugs

The ways that drug use and drug policy are theorised and explained have important justice implications. The following publications explore this is more detail:

• Metcalf McGrath, L. and Beckett Wilson, H. (2024) Stigmatised and stressed: UK cannabis patients living in the context of prohibition, Critical Social Policy [Online First] https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183241262777
• Wakeman, S. (2016). The moral economy of heroin in ‘austerity Britain’. Critical Criminology, 24(3): 363-377.
• Beckett Wilson, Helen (2014), ‘Criminal justice? Using a social capital theory to evaluate probation-managed drug policy.’ Probation Journal 61(1) 60:78 (Journal article).