Licit and illicit drug policies: a typology

To foster comparison of policy interventions across the various categories of licit and illicit drugs, we develop a typology of policies intended to address drug abuse problems. The principal dimensions of the typology are policy type and intervention channel. While the typology has important limitations, as a mechanism to organize information and stimulate thought it holds the potential to improve understanding of commonalities and distinctions among policies applying to widely discrepant drug problems, both within and across cultures. As such, it could contribute to the development of more effective approaches to grappling with a diverse set of drug policy issues.