Author Archives: Toby Seddon

To start the new year, I’ve revamped this blog and website, to include new pages covering my books, papers and projects. Work is ongoing to build up the content but do take a look round.

A recent report in The Guardian, on a ‘huge rise’ in illicit online sales of pharmaceuticals, reminded me of one of the best books I read in 2014: legal scholar Anupam Chander’s The Electronic Silk Road. Chander’s great insight, to … Continue reading →

On December 4th, I will be giving a public lecture in Manchester. The lecture’s premise is that we have reached a dead-end in our thinking about global illicit drug problems. The argument I will make is that the way out … Continue reading →

The publication of the Home Affairs Select Committee report on drug policy, followed by Nick Clegg’s intervention on the matter, raised a huge amount of interest in the field, prompting a flurry of media appearances, tweets, blogs and the like. … Continue reading →

A familiar trope in drug policy debates is the idea that policy-makers should pay closer attention to research and that there is a choice to be made between, on one side, ‘science’ and ‘evidence’, and on the other, ‘dogma’ and … Continue reading →

There is a widely-held view that drug policy in Britain (and elsewhere) is in the throes of a major transformation. Whereas for the last decade or longer, the policy obsession seemed to be with crime and criminal justice, over the … Continue reading →

Drug policy campaigners often call for policy to be re-oriented towards public health, as a more progressive and constructive approach than the criminalising strategy of prohibition. The broad thrust of this type of call is that we should be more … Continue reading →

Over the last year, I have been working with my colleague Matthew Bacon on an ESRC-funded project studying the growing use of contract-like agreements with drug users in treatment settings. It’s been one of the most fascinating studies I’ve ever … Continue reading →

Last month, I presented this paper at an All Souls Criminology Seminar in Oxford, at the kind invitation of Ian Loader. I promised those who were there that I’d blog about it and, although it’s taken a bit longer than … Continue reading →

Last Wednesday, I spent a very enjoyable afternoon here with a group of my colleagues from the Law School. Sat around the table were several lawyers with expertise in different fields, an economist, some criminologists and a handful of socio-legal … Continue reading →