RESOURCES: Review - No quick fix to the UK's illicit drugs problem

Author Adrian Barton's intention is to draw together the disparate threads from the allegedly bewildering array of different approaches to addressing the drugs scene. He is right to say that illicit drugs have been examined under the rubric of a diversity of academic disciplines, but he is wrong to suggest, implicitly, that these have not been drawn together before.

Indeed, I was surprised that he makes no reference to Howard Parker's UK Drugs Unlimited (Palgrave 2001), which captures in one volume the important and influential range of work carried out by Parker and his colleagues in Manchester.

This is not to devalue this text. It will certainly prove useful to students and researchers as a foundation textbook. It maps the key issues and questions: the historical development of drug use, the shifting policy responses, supply and distribution, personal and social costs, and connections with youth culture and crime. Much of this was all very familiar to me, although it did make me aware of how fast the scene can shift. There will be a reclassification of cannabis from class B to class C, for sure, but Barton's account of "current" UK drugs policy is already dated: there have since been changes in both emphasis and priority.