Producing alcohol and other drugs as a policy ‘problem’: A critical analysis of South Africa's ‘National Drug Master Plan’ (2013–2017)

Abstract

Background

The strong symbolic value of illicit drug use makes it a contested issue, which attracts mixed public opinion, intense media attention and close political scrutiny. This means that the formulation of plausible, authoritative policies governing illicit drugs must navigate fraught political terrain. In a country like South Africa with its long unique history of institutionalised oppression of the black majority, the issues confronting drug policy are particularly complex and the need for carefully formulated policy responses especially urgent. Yet despite this, the area of drug policy development in South Africa has received little scholarly attention to date.

Methods

This paper explores the complexities of policymaking in the South African context by drawing on feminist scholar Carol Bacchi's poststructuralist approach to policy analysis, which focuses on how policy helps to produce the problems it purports to solve. Taking as its empirical focus, South Africa's current drug policy, the third National Drug Master Plan (NDMP), 2013–2017, the paper analyses how the policy constitutes the ‘problem of alcohol and other drugs’ (AODs).

Results

We identify three central policy proposals through which specific problematisations emerge: (1) the proposal that drug use is a global issue requiring a coordinated policy response, (2) appeals to evidence-based policy proposals and (3) the proposal that AOD ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ be treated interchangeably. We suggest that these proposals reveal a tendency towards inflating the ‘problem of AODs’ and thus work to justify punitive policy measures.

Conclusions

In an effort to explore the implications of particular problematisations for effecting social change, we clarify the ways in which the policy may work to undermine the interests of those it seeks to aid by reinforcing stigma and marginalisation.

Introduction

Given the controversy surrounding illicit drug use, the formulation of effective, credible policies governing such use must navigate complex political terrain. Policies are seen as needing to address public concern about illicit drug use as well as demonstrating a capacity to remedy the problems presumed to follow from drug use (Fraser & Moore, 2011). At the same time, the strong symbolic value of illicit drug use means it draws mixed opinion (Ritter, 2011) and policies can sometimes attract criticism for their tendency to pathologise people who use drugs, and stigmatise already marginalised communities (Buchanan & Young, 2000). In a country like South Africa with its unique history of social exclusion and political disenfranchisement of the black majority, the issues confronting policymakers are especially challenging and the need for carefully formulated policy responses are particularly pressing. In an effort to explore the complexities of policymaking in the South African context, we draw on feminist scholar Carol Bacchi's poststructuralist approach to policy analysis, which offers tools for analysing the ways in which ‘problems’ are constituted within policies. Rather than accepting policy definitions of social problems, Bacchi's ‘What's the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) approach invites consideration of how particular issues are represented as ‘problems’ in policy. Doing so requires scrutiny of what counts as a ‘problem’ and the implications of particular problematisations for how governing takes place. This approach has been productively used to examine a variety of alcohol and other drug (AOD) policy issues (see e.g. Fraser and Moore, 2011, Lancaster and Ritter, 2014), and laws in the Australian context (Lancaster et al., 2015b, Seear and Fraser, 2014). It has also been applied in a cross-national comparison of recovery discourse in two Australian and British AOD policy reports (Lancaster, Duke & Ritter, 2015). Despite these important scholarly contributions to understanding the complexities of AOD policymaking in Western policy contexts, a critical analysis of AOD policy development in the South African context has yet to be undertaken. Alongside Bacchi's WPR approach, we draw on an analysis of rhetoric and an assessment of the objectives of South Africa's current AOD policy.

Drug policy in South Africa has historically been dominated by prohibitionist and supply reduction approaches aimed at achieving a drug free society (Otu, 2011, Parry and Myers, 2011). However, in the lead-up to the development of the third National Drug Master Plan 2013–2017 (NDMP) – South Africa's key national policy document – commentators called for a more nuanced harm reduction approach (Parry and Myers, 2011, Van Niekerk, 2011). Given these two different visions for AOD policy and the fairly recent adoption of the current NDMP, a critical analysis of South Africa's AOD policy is both timely and important. Following Bacchi's observation that policies are active in producing the problems they claim to address, we explore how the ‘problem of AODs’ has been articulated in South Africa's third NDMP, and with what potential effects for those governed by it. In doing so, we identify the discursive strategies used to render AODs (especially illicit drugs) a particular kind of ‘problem’, and clarify how this problematisation authorises certain measures as legitimate. As we do not have access to empirical data on the implementation of the NDMP, we do not seek to evaluate how the policy is being applied in practice, nor whether it is an effective means of governance. And while we make some tentative observations on the implications of this policy for those it targets, a thoroughgoing assessment of how specific policy practices affect the individuals and communities concerned requires further research. Nonetheless the arguments we develop are likely to be of interest both within and beyond the South African policy context in that they raise questions about the potential of policy to undermine the interests of those it seeks to aid – in this case people who use AODs – by reinforcing stigma and marginalisation.