Drugs, disobedience, and democracy:Civil disobedience and drug policy

This chapter evaluates claims of civil disobedience made in a drug policy context. Previous literature identifies two claims or kinds of claim. For one, the clandestine practice and ideology of harm reduction, which basically means offering health care and different kinds of services to people who use drugs in order to minimise the negative health, social, and legal impacts of drug use. The other is the civil disobedience of cannabis activism, which protests against policies of prohibition by openly violating drug laws in the Global Marijuana March, among many other similar public gatherings. The author considers these claims in light of Rex Martin’s definition of justifiable civil disobedience in a democracy. The analysis is based on previous case studies (harm reduction) and autoethnography (cannabis activism).This chapter evaluates claims of civil disobedience made in a drug policy context. Previous literature identifies two claims or kinds of claim. For one, the clandestine practice and ideology of harm reduction, which basically means offering health care and different kinds of services to people who use drugs in order to minimise the negative health, social, and legal impacts of drug use. The other is the civil disobedience of cannabis activism, which protests against policies of prohibition by openly violating drug laws in the Global Marijuana March, among many other similar public gatherings. The author considers these claims in light of Rex Martin’s definition of justifiable civil disobedience in a democracy. The analysis is based on previous case studies (harm reduction) and autoethnography (cannabis activism)