An End-Of-Module assessment / dissertation for Level 3 Criminology BA (Hons) with The Open University. Researched and written during May 2025 by mature student Róisín Pitman.
Criminalisation is a legislative process within states, where agreed laws define certain behaviours as criminal, and which are subject to various legal remedies. Criminalisation can change within a particular state, historically, culturally and politically (Schur, 1969) cited in Newburn (2017). Using the subject of drugs, both illicit and legal, this essay proposes to argue that criminalisation cannot be considered a neutral legal process but one created and changed over time, to reflect the political and economic influence of those in power, which the state would argue, is to protect the public and reduce crime. A state consists of lands within internationally agreed borders, that can share borders with other states. Citizens are offered a certain level of protection within those borders, while laws are created and policed to control their behaviour (Copson, 2020). States can be liberal-democratic, totalitarian, absolute monarchies or constitutionally racist (Mooney & Tombs, 2020, p.17). Laws enacted by the state are engineered to favour the most powerful and influential, often at the expense of the majority. Not all harms are designated as crimes and one may argue that there are many harms that go un-criminalised (Copson, 2020, p.9). This essay will argue that the criminalisation of drug users through the prohibition model, used globally, is ineffective in reducing drug consumption, costly in relation to criminal justice, diverts finance away from and interferes with, public healthcare and scientific discovery, while disproportionately targeting people from marginalised and socio-economically poor communities. Firstly, this essay will explore the historical roots of the prohibition model that commenced with the inauguration of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930; Secondly, the essay looks at countries that retain the death penalty for drug users, dealers and traffickers, and the effects that strict drug enforcement has on marginalised communities that often have little choice but to sell drugs to survive. As well as judicial punishment, some countries, such as The Philippines, have resorted to promoting vigilantism that can be traced to the President of the country. Thirdly this essay explores legal drug production within the global pharmaceutical industry, known as ‘Big Pharma’ and examines Braithwaite’s belief that the description of a global pharmaceutical company matches those of an organised crime group. The state is also shown to be conflicted as they are both supporters of Big Pharma financially, for production and research grants as well as their regulators, creating a conflict of interest and opportunities for illegality. Fourthly, this essay explores the conundrum of legal medical research, using illicit substances, restricted heavily by the continued prohibition model of drug control and inadvertently creating criminals of health trial participants. Fifthly, this essay explores the early stages of decriminalisation and legalisation of certain drugs as some states seek an alternative to drug prohibition, by removing criminalisation and treating drug use as a health issue. Sixthly and seventhly, this essay explores resistance to prohibition and introduction to illicit drug use as a public health and educational issue, with several organisations and former law enforcement, government and health professionals promoting the futility of prohibition and the health and financial benefits of decriminalisation.
During the 19th century in the former British colony of the United States of America, mood-altering substances such as opiates and cocaine were plentiful in supply and used legally by the public for many reasons, including pharmaceutical use to treat several medical conditions. They were regularly advertised in newspapers and were openly available to purchase, such as heroin cough syrup and cocaine added to drinks to boost mood. In 1915 new laws restricted legal imports of opium and American citizens started to associate drug use such as opium, with Chinese immigrants working on the railways, cocaine was linked to black people and marijuana with Mexicans who were all seen as problematic due to their perceived drug use and people’s connection of drug use with criminality (Musto, 1991). In 1930 the USA formed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and appointed former alcohol prohibition officer Harry J. Anslinger as its first Commissioner. He was allowed a certain amount of autonomy and oversaw enacting federal drugs laws, resulting in the criminalisation of previously law-abiding citizens. Anslinger was the prime influence in national and international drugs policy which he used to exaggerate the dangers of drugs. This led to Congress enacting even more restrictive drugs legislation and harming American citizens who had now been criminalised as a result. With Anslinger’s connections, he was able to use the discourse of regular media releases to sensationalise the perceived drugs problem and keep the general population and the politicians on his side (Kinder & Walker III, 1986). One of the most disturbing pronouncements made by Anslinger was the harm caused to criminalising drug addicts and arguing that these addicts were the nation’s most serious criminals. He painted frightening images of innocent youth being corrupted by drugs and by the violence that drug use promoted and reduced what used to be seen as a medical issue down to a harmful ‘public menace’ trope. Anslinger regularly used racist language and targeted non-white citizens such as the Mexican’s using marijuana that he referred to as “loco weed”, but that Anslinger claimed made people violent and murderous (Provine, 2011). This scapegoating of minorities has continued to this day with lower socio-economic non-white citizens and immigrants being labelled criminal due to a perceived link to drug use that sees law enforcement disproportionately criminalise and harm those minority populations (Tosh, 2021). Criminalisation of formerly legal drug users, in these circumstances, created by the power of the state and based on the imperialism and puritanism of the early American settlers, continue to cause immeasurable harm to the public. While imprisonment is usually the sentence for those that transgress states’ drug laws, this essay next considers the harms endured by the criminalisation of drug offenders in totalitarian states where the death penalty and extra-judicial ‘justice’ is metered out regularly by and endorsed by the state.
There are thirty-four countries that retain the death penalty for drug offences including cultivation, manufacturing and trafficking as well as possession, storing, hiding or financing drugs. While the more secretive countries hide their death penalty and execution figures, classified as a state secret, there were 615 reported executions in 2024, from a handful of countries, despite it being contrary to international law. This accounted for forty per cent of all known worldwide executions, with Iran responsible for seventy-nine per cent of all known drug related executions (Girelli et al., 2025, p.9-13). A prohibitive drug policy in these totalitarian countries is a key element of retaining capital punishment, but there would need to be massive political change in these countries to end the death penalty. There were even countries discussing introducing or reintroducing death penalties for drug offences during 2024 including Nigeria, Tonga, Fiji and the Maldives, while in the Philippines there were numerous bills awaiting discussion in their Congress but unlikely to be adopted (Girelli et al., 2025, p.16-17). Research informs us that there is no correlation between the rates of drug use and the restrictive punishments metered out in a prohibitive model of drug enforcement (Home Office, 2014) cited in Zampini and Stengel (2020, p.27). In fact, in the Global Financial Integrity review of 2017, cited in Zampini and Stengel (2020, p.26) the value of the illegal drugs market was between US$426 and US$652 billion per year and likely to rise. One example of a harmful action, caused to the public regarding the prohibition of drugs stance was in the Philippines in 2016, who mirrored the 1980s rhetoric of American First Lady, Nancy Reagan, in her ‘just say no to drugs’ campaign. President Duterte took the ‘war on drugs’ literally, to convince the country that he was a strong leader and declared war on those involved in the drugs trade including an open call for citizens to assault and kill those involved in dealing and using drugs (Zampini and Stengel, 2020, p.28). Lower socio-economic populations, as in countries like The Philippines, live in poverty with no work and little opportunity to improve their lives and, out of necessity, are drawn into the illicit drugs market (Seddon, 2005; Murji, 2007) cited in Zampini and Stengel (2020, p.28). However, Duterte used the vigilantism against those involved in drugs, to mask his political failings in not addressing the severe harms caused to those living below the poverty line with no means to improve their lives (Zampini & Stengel, pp.27-29). So far, this essay has looked at harms to people due to the criminalisation of drugs, however, it may be argued that some far worse drug harms caused to people are currently not considered criminal, such as those caused by ‘Big Pharma’.
Braithwaite (1984) cited in Tombs (2020, p.97) described the pharmaceutical industry, colloquially named ‘Big Pharma’, as akin to an organised crime group, in that large drug companies were hierarchical in composition, run by faceless people motivated by profit, operating across international borders with sales increasing with customer dependency. Because drugs, such as for cancer patients in the Global North, are more lucrative to create and sell, drug companies overlook the production of drugs that would wipeout diarrhoea, sleeping sickness tuberculosis and malaria, in many Global South countries; extremely harmful but not criminal (Tombs, 2020, p.86). According to Corporate Watch (2006) cited in Tombs (2020, pp.88-90) there are 14 million preventable deaths from infectious diseases every year, predominantly in the Global South, caused by a lack of health services, poverty and water and sanitation, but the harms caused are emanating from Big Pharma in the Global North. Corporate Watch also identified behaviour from the pharmaceutical companies that further demonstrated the harm that can be caused without it crossing into criminalisation such as deliberately overpricing drugs, immoral ‘direct-to-consumer’ marketing, through mainstream media and social media, influencing Doctors to prescribe particular drugs by paid inducements, and ‘kicking the poor’; using the government to protect that company’s patents and prevent cheaper versions being created (Tombs, 2020, pp.90-92). Braithwaite (1984) cited in Tombs (2020,p.92) stated that Big Pharma were guilty of actual crimes such as bribery, negligent and fraudulent testing, unsafe manufacturing, illegal promotions, and creation of ‘medical colonialism’ by sub-contracting Global South drug testing companies that have weaker regulations and standards (Rawlinson & Yadavendu, 2015) cited in Tombs (2020, p.94). While few individuals have successfully been prosecuted for the harm that these companies create, as it is impossible to identify personal accountability and criminality, Big Pharma are not new to being fined substantial sums. An example of a company being found liable for criminality and causing great harm to its patients was German company Chemie-Grünenthal who produced Thalidomide in the 1950s, marketed as a sleeping pill and morning sickness drug. Test results showed detrimental effects and deformities on the foetus which were covered up, while pressure was applied to approve the drug. Nine company executives were charged but evaded criminal sanctions with an out-of-court settlement, despite the harm and devastation caused (Ross, 2005) cited in Tombs (2020, p.96). In 2018, Americans spent $535 billion on prescription drugs. The most prescribed drugs were inflated by 40% to 71% from 2011 to 2015 despite companies receiving government grants and tax breaks. Type 1 diabetics were rationing their own supply of insulin, due to the cost, causing complications and some deaths. The company Eli Lilly charged, per vial, $300 to Americans while only double figures in other parts of the world, harmful but not criminal (Meller & Ahmed, 2019). Next, we discuss mind-altering drugs, weigh up the harms of legal and criminalised substances, and explore the use of psychedelic drugs to aid treatment for mental health issues.
Many drugs, previously legally available prior to the ‘prohibition model’ of drug control, have had a major effect on the last six decades of medical and therapeutic research. Many drugs, classed as illegal and therefore restricted, are used in medical fields, such as opioids for pain relief, amphetamines for attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder and cocaine for anaesthesia in ear, nose and throat surgery, but they are strictly controlled (Nutt, 2015, pp.3-4). In 2009, Professor David Nutt, then the UK government’s drugs adviser, declared that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many criminalised drugs, such as cannabis, ecstasy and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Nutt clashed with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith when claiming that policy should be based on scientific evidence and not political posturing, which ultimately led to his dismissal (Travis, 2009). Prior to the banning of drugs, like LSD, it was used in trials for alcoholism and ecstasy was used to relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, but because these drugs are in Schedule 1 of the United Nations convention on drugs i.e., having “no medical use in the UK”, it was difficult to get permission to use them. Some synthetic versions were made, with compounds that were considered legal at the time, until the law banned those, and research was abandoned. Big Pharma steered clear of using illegal drugs in drug trials due to the high cost and numerous legal blocks and the fact that company shareholders were uncomfortable being associated with allegations of condoning drug ‘abuse’ (Nutt, 2015, pp.5-6). This year Chapman and Naulls (2025, pp.5-9) wrote a research paper for the UK Government about using psychedelic drugs (such as LSD, Ecstasy and Psilocybin {magic mushrooms}) as part of psychedelic-assisted therapy to attempt to aid post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Because these drugs (other than Ketamine) are in Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, they need Home Office licences for research. Some members of parliament have supported the request that some Schedule 1 drugs be downgraded (while remaining Class ‘A’ illicit substances) to relieve restrictions and aid research. In 2023 the Home Affairs committee made a recommendation to reschedule psychedelic drugs to allow for greater freedom to conduct medical trials. When viewing the relationship of criminalisation with crime, harm and the state, there is a glaring issue. While using these drugs in medical trials under strict controls, the drugs are being used legally. However, if these drugs are successful in trials, there is currently no state mechanism that allows continued legal use outside of a trial, thus criminalising patients that need to continue taking them, automatically causing harm and likely regression of their condition. Some states and organisations are challenging the prohibition model and championing ‘resistance’ by seeking medical rather than criminal interventions.
For decades the United Nations drug conventions held similar views to the prohibitionist stance promoted and exported by Anslinger’s US Federal Bureau of Narcotics. However, the landscape is changing, and some countries are part of the resistance movement by removing the criminalisation of some or all drugs. By 2020, Uruguay, Canada and eleven American states had created new laws to control a legal cannabis market. Even some countries, well known for drug production, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, now allow personal cannabis use (Aaronson & Shaffer, 2020). Portugal, however, are an example of a complete change of direction from prohibition to decriminalisation of all personal drug taking. In the latter part of the 20th century, Portugal had the highest number of intravenous heroin users in Europe and a high rate of deaths and HIV infections. In 1998 a Portuguese panel of experts in the drugs and treatment field recommended that drug use be seen as more a medical issue than a criminal one, recommending prevention, treatment and rehabilitation instead of criminalisation and incarceration. In 1999 Portugal ended criminal sanctions for drug users while continuing to criminalise drug production and trafficking. Decriminalisation of personal drug use became law in 2001. By removing personal use as a crime, it also reduced the harms from the threat of incarceration, separation from supportive family, and the reduction on risky behaviour that illicit drug use may engender. The Portuguese state posited that by reducing the financial burden of criminalising personal drug users, it would be able to divert those resources to fighting drug trafficking while affording treatment programmes for users, thus reducing the harms caused by a state’s former prohibitive drug policies (Félix & Portugal, 2017). Greenwald (2009) cited in Félix and Portugal (2017, p.123) stated that drug usage and drug deaths decreased greatly as well as the number of persons diagnosed with HIV and AIDS since decriminalisation was introduced, thus further reducing harms. Portugal’s new decriminalisation model, recommended by the 1998 panel, led to the formation of the National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs (NSFAD) and Gonçalves et al. (2015) cited in Felix and Portugal (2017, p.123), who studied the social cost to the NSFAD, found that there was a substantial reduction in criminal justice costs associated with criminalising, prosecuting and incarcerating drug users that could be better redirected to treatment and rehabilitation. Becker and Murphy (2013) cited in Félix and Portugal (2017, p123) claimed that the American-led “war on drugs” should be abandoned and replaced with the Portuguese model to reduce the US prison population. Further resistance to the criminalisation of drug users by other states, and the promotion of harm reduction, instead of harm creation, has seen the emergence of many organisations that promote an alternative to labelling people as criminals in relation to illicit drug use. These include former police officers, policy makers and health professionals such as former UK undercover police drug squad officer Neil Woods and the UK chapter of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.
Many police forces understand that the ‘war on drugs’ will never end unless there are major changes to abolish the prohibition model surrounding drugs. Former police officers are now part of the resistance to the current drug laws. In the UK, Neil Woods (2017) a former undercover drugs police officer is one such person. He stated that with a multi-billion-pound industry like the illicit drug trade, the state has made criminalisation inevitable. While dangerous traffickers, dealers and enforcers are rightly imprisoned, the law surrounding prohibition traps addicts and criminalises them for having a drug habit. With the label of criminal, it is far harder to obtain genuine help from government health services. Woods stated that most of the major drug dealers that he encountered were merely businessmen who decided that the illicit drugs trade was a viable business opportunity, nothing more (Woods, 2017, pp.298-301). Soon after Woods left the police, he sought out an American group, founded in 2002, called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and became the UK chapter’s first Chairman, consisting of former officers from all ranks, including Chief Constables, and included health professionals, judges and lawyers. Woods stated that 90% of drug users consume them without wrecking their lives while billions of pounds are spent on the criminalisation, by the state, of drug addicts. Harms are caused to the addict by incarceration when they should be getting medical and social interventions (Woods, 2017, p.303). As LEAP’s profile in the UK increased, they, alongside the Centre for Law Enforcement and Public Health delivered a statement to the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2019, calling for “more humane drug policies” to supersede laws resulting in mass incarceration in places such as the US, and human rights abuses and extra-judicial assaults and killings, such as in Duterte’s Philippines, previously mentioned. The statement mentioned that decriminalisation and legal regulation would vastly diminish the illicit market and reduce harms to health, corruption by police and officials and the economic cost to countries (Cross, 2019). According to the Association of Directors of Public Health website (2025) there were 5,448 drug related deaths, according to the Office of National Statistics, in England and Wales in 2023, 11% up on the previous year while in Scotland, there were 1,172 drug deaths in 2023, up 11.5%. Holland (2020) stated, even before the most recent statistics, that drug related deaths were already the highest on record. Prohibition drug policies are created and driven by the power relationship between politicians and the population they serve. To reclassify drug use from criminal to that of harm reduction, this essay looks at The Loop, a UK based drug harm reduction entity.
The Loop is a UK based organisation that seeks to reduce the harms caused by drug use through a series of harm reduction programmes including healthcare, interventions, training and workshops which is informed by research with evidence showing that ‘drug checking’ is effective in lowering drug related harms and medical issues. Drug checking in the community can be carried out with the cooperation of law enforcement and signed off by the relevant Chief Constables. In 2016 The Loop carried out its first on-site drug testing facility at an outdoor festival while in 2018, they introduced the UK’s first community-based drug checking service on the streets of Bristol and Durham. In 2024, with a licence issued by the UK Home Office, The Loop engage in regular city centre drug testing in Bristol, where users can take any drug and get it tested, whether they had concerns about its provenance or not. As well as the results, users would be given a tailored healthcare consultation which was non-judgemental and confidential and aimed at reducing the harms of drug taking. All drugs tested are passed to the police for destruction and nobody using this service is harmed or criminalised by the state. Co-Founder of The Loop is Professor Fiona Measham, Chair in Criminology at the University of Liverpool since 2019, who has spent three decades researching drug use in general as well as in the music festival and night-time economy (The Loop, no date).
Harm reduction by drug safety testing is not a new phenomenon. Street drugs were tested in the late 1960s and early ‘70s in California, while testing came to Europe in the 1990s at the commencement of ‘acid house’ and the use of the party drug ecstasy. At The Loop’s first festival drug testing in 2016, chemists on-site analysed 247 substances, gave 230 healthcare consultations to 900 attendees which included harm reduction advice. Test results showed that one in five substances were not as described by the seller, one in five used the on-site disposal service for substances of concern. Two thirds of users whose sample was not as described, disposed of other samples. It was also noted that women were identified as taking drugs for the first time and more likely to dispose of them. This pilot showed that festival-goers generally had a positive experience of the drug testing facility (Measham, 2019). The positive understanding between the state and health workers in this endeavour to allow for drug users to openly, and without judgement or criminalisation, get their drugs tested, is a positive example of resistance to the prohibitive drugs legislation that has dominated many countries for over ninety years.
In conclusion, the relationship of criminalisation to crime, harm and the state, is shown with the state creating new criminals, by deeming certain actions, previously legal, as a crime, such as drug possession. This further creates harm with higher reported crime rates, increases in the prison population, higher state finances to police the drug laws and subsequent costs of the judicial system. The prohibition model of control, deterrence and incarceration, is harmful. Drug use should be treated as a public health issue and should be regulated by states through decriminalisation and legalisation while law enforcement can direct resources more usefully into targeting organised crime and drug production and trafficking. In fact, figures have shown that the market has increased exponentially and is worth multi-hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Criminalisation has been shown to be ineffective with vast sums being spent by governments attempting to combat it. The prohibition model of drug control, introduced in the United States in 1930 and exported around the globe, instantly criminalised people for previously legal activities. Initial US government prohibition overtly targeted marginalised mostly non-white communities, often from socio-economically poor areas. The new laws were supported by a directed effort through the media, to villainise and persecute non-white citizens, claiming that drugs created violence and murder, and users should be incarcerated. The authorities justified this to protect the public, reduce crime and control the population while reflecting the political views of the period. Even within the thirty-four countries that retain the death penalty for drug offences, there has been a steady increase of those executed or sentenced to death, year on year, so evidently capital punishment does not act as a deterrent either. Those on death row are also predominantly from marginalised communities or those considered expendable and rarely the faceless businesspeople at the top of the drugs chain. There are also faceless people at the top of most Big Pharma companies, the legal drug production industry, but that doesn’t mean that laws aren’t broken and the thin line between legal and illegal is regularly crossed but extremely difficult to police and prosecute. The harms caused by pharmaceutical companies, have regularly been discovered and subject to legal proceedings, accompanied by high figure fines but rarely are the individuals responsible prosecuted despite thousands of people receiving medical injuries. Criminalisation has also been responsible for the difficulties in operating medical drug trials, using illicit substances, as the prohibition model means that a drug that was successful during the trial, would not be legally available outside it, and would criminalise a person under health treatment. In countries such as Portugal, decriminalising all drugs in 2001 has led to better health conditions, less drug deaths and incarcerations, and more money diverted into health resources. Other states now have models of decriminalisation or active drug legalisation, and there are many non-state groups who are emerging from prohibition and declaring resistance and the redirection to a harm reduction and health issue. Many of these resistance groups are formed with former police officers, judges, politicians and health workers at their core, promoting drugs education, safe testing, legalisation, and treatment instead of prosecution and incarceration which stigmatises and criminalises drug addicts, making it harder for them to reintegrate into society. The state creates the problems that they are trying to solve.
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Urban Warrior Princess 