Drugs,law, people,place and the state: ongoing regulation,resistance and change

We introduce this special issue firstly by tracing drugs from their traditional, cultural and religious uses through to their roles as commodities in colonial relations and now the global economy. We secondly explore the shifting nature of drugs and drug use in different places and times as shaped by politics, especially state regulation and the law. Thirdly, given the complexity as well as contingency of drugs, we survey a wide range of relevant theoretical approaches, but suggest that a critical analysis attend to their spatial framing and geography. Fourthly, and finally, we summarize the eight papers comprising this collection.     

The Philosophy of the Gift and the Psychology of Advocacy: Critical Reflections on Forensic Mental Health Intervention

This article examines mental health advocacy,exploring the philosophy of the gift and thepsychology of forensic intervention. Byselectively, though strategically, reviewing the workof Hobbes, Emerson, and Nietzsche,we argue that egoism, charity, and pity displace altruistic, selfless gift-giving. To furtherlegitimize our analysis, we consider Derrida's semiotic deconstructionism and Lacan's psychoanalytic semiotics. Derrida points outhow gift-giving is an aporetic reality; that is,it represents an (im)possibility. Lacandemonstrates how the mirror stage of development givesrise to the self-other ego, in which the subjectis always and already divided. We subsequentlyexplain, therefore, how the gift of mental healthadvocacy must necessarily proceed, in part, from self-interests (i.e., egoism), making the virtuousact of mental health advocacy an (im)possibility.