COMPLIMENTARY CYCLES OF FAILURE AND STIGMA: THE IATROGENIC NATURE OF DRUG PROHIBITION AND MARKET NEOLIBERALISM.

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to reframe the policy of drug prohibition, not as a policy deriving solely from a paternal state, but influenced, and perpetuated as part of the overall impact of neoliberal policy and social control. It will do this by identifying certain similarities and trends of Irish society and their similarities with those in other more entrenched neoliberal jurisdictions. Aiding in the structure and content of this paper will be various theoretical models that inevitably overlap, namely Merton’s strain theory and its contemporaries, (Messner and Rosenfield) Cohens sub-culture theory, Garland’s culture of control and Louis Wacquant’s account of punitive neoliberalism. Within these modes of thought, the aspiration is to express the policy of drug prohibition, in light of its protracted failure, as not some unified conspiracy, but a natural evolution of an Irish state, preserving control of a population rendered superfluous by and within an increasingly neoliberal and globalized system. These arenas increase the obstacles of the drug afflicted by perpetuating stigma and exclusion from the economic engines of society e.g. employment, education, healthcare.

Chapter one illuminates how prohibition can no longer be justified, nor effective, due to the numerous ways in which it aggravates and perpetuates drug crime throughout the world. Chapter two will present the methodology, limitations and findings of research conducted by the author and the implications of the results with regard to this thesis. Chapter three will then attempt to explain these results by placing prohibition within the wider context of the impact of free market neoliberalism. This chapter aims to highlight the direct and indirect relationships between free market neoliberalism, state institutions, social insecurity and drug policy. In doing so the crucial landscape of Irish institutions will be examined with other jurisdictions to identify neoliberal progress and inclinations.