How can and do empirical studies influence drug policies? Narratives and complexity in the use of evidence in policy making

Some recent contributions to debates on drug policy and the use of evidence (e.g. Henderson, 2012; Nutt, 2012) have assumed that drug policy could be improved if politicians paid more attention to scientific evidence. While not disagreeing with the broad thrust of this argument, we would like to question some of the assumptions about how evidence can and does influence policy. This was the theme of the Sixth Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), which was hosted by the University of Kent in Canterbury in May 2012. Papers from this conference comprise the main body of this special issue. This editorial develops some theoretical ideas concerning the policy impact of empirical research, before introducing the articles which illustrate the variety of ways that drug policy analysis can be relevant to policy making. We are specifically interested in narratives – both of and in drug policy making – and the complexity of the policy process. We argue that these render some recommendations for improving drug policy somewhat naïve. Much more attention needs to be paid to issues of problem construction, politics, ideology, power and the messy complexity of the policy process.