Book review: Toby Seddon, A History of Drugs: Drugs and Freedom in the Liberal Age
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | David T. Courtwright |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895811435586 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews 219
findings therefore provide further evidence to support the general direction of travel
recently recommended by the Review of Police Leadership and Training (Neyroud,
2011), which documented an increasingly professional police institution emerging in the
context of more structured relations between police training and higher education.
Overall, the book is well worth reading, providing a unique insight into the senior
ranks of the British police service at a time of major change. It provides some useful
evidence for those thinking about the future of the service and some very worrying
material for those already alarmed by the intrusion of politics into operational policing
decisions. On the evidence of this book, that horse has already bolted. It is clear from
the responses that Chief Officers already feel that they are vulnerable to national politi-
cal interference. The impending arrival (scheduled for late 2012) of directly elected
Police and Crime Commissioners – who will have a crucial role in the governance of
local policing and community safety – seems likely to relegate them still further to the
role of Chief ‘Operating’ Officers subordinate to and ‘at the will’ of elected politicians,
many of whom are likely to be ambitious to make their mark before moving on to
national politics. If the relationships are corrosive now (and Caless provides incontro-
vertible evidence that they are), it is predictable that they will be far worse in the not
too distant future.
References
Neyroud PW (2011) Review of Police Leadership and Training. London: Home Office.
Reiner R (1991) Chief Constables. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Toby Seddon
A History of Drugs: Drugs and Freedom in the Liberal Age, Routledge: Abingdon,
2010; x + 184 pp.: 9780415480277, £75 (hbk), 9780415589604, £28 (pbk)
Reviewed by: David T. Courtwright, University of North Florida, USA
Toby Seddon has written a genealogy of the drug problem which emerged in its modern
form roughly two centuries ago, along with liberal capitalism. As liberal ideology
evolved, so did drug policy. In the age of laissez-faire, policy was minimally restrictive.
In the age of welfare liberalism, roughly from the end of the 19th century until the 1970s,
policy became more restrictive and more paternalistic. In the current neo-liberal epoch,
regulators have increasingly relied on ‘strategies of responsibilization in which citizens
are governed through their own choices’ (p. 12, emphasis in original). If you end up in
gaol or hospital, it is your fault for indulging in risky behaviour.
Seddon considers three British laws, the 1868 Pharmacy Act, the 1920 Dangerous
Drugs Act, and the 2005 Drugs Act, as milestones in drug-policy development. Each
reflected prevailing notions of addiction, will, freedom, and the proper role of govern-
ment. Like the law itself, addiction was a social construct arising from the matrix of
liberal capitalism and its concern for individual freedom, whose conception also evolved
over time – in part because of the threat posed by drugs and addiction. To trace these
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