Author Archives: Toby Seddon

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 →

Today’s my last day in work in 2011. This week, I’ve got immersed in writing a new paper (actually first started a while ago), provisionally titled ‘Inventing Drugs’. It’s essentially an extended and significantly developed version of this small piece … Continue reading →