The global drug prohibition regime: Prospects for stability and change in an increasingly less prohibitionist world

By Ondrej Ditry

In this article, we trace the operations of power, i.e., how different forms of power combine, compete and resist each other in the emergence, later evolution and the present dynamic of the international drug control regime (IDCR). We confirm the assumption that the prohibition in the IDCR, as well as other features of the system, has been the result of a series of political decisions taken by a specific group of powerful states at the center of global capitalist economy, and the USA as the system hegemon above all. The regime, we argue, however also betrays powerful inertia factors associated with institutional, structural and productive types of power that pose an obstacle to its transformation even when, in some respects, there exists convincing evidence that suggests other approaches would be more effective and less costly. In view of the current challenge to the IDCR’s core prohibitionist rationality which we align with an evolutionary change in the operation of compulsory power, in the conclusion we discuss how a change to the status quo may be steered to avoid the regime’s gradual obliteration.

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