Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter introduces the book’s focus and aims: to provide a radical intellectual reappraisal of how the international drug control system functions, where it came from, and the possibilities for alternative futures, through a critical interdisciplinary analysis. It sets out a concise overview of the background and context for the rest of the book, including patterns and trends over time in global drug supply and consumption as well as the evolution of international drug control. It concludes by outlining the three main parts of the book and describing how these build the book’s central argument that seeing the ‘drug question’ differently can allow us to imagine alternative and better ways of dealing with this thorniest of contemporary policy problems.