Social construction and the evidence-based drug policy endeavour

'Evidence-based policy' has become the catch-cry of the drug policy field. A growing literature has been dedicated to better realising the goal of evidence-based drug policy: to maximise the use of the best quality research to inform policy decision-making and help answer the question of 'what works'. Alternative accounts in the policy processes literature conceptualise policy activity as an ambiguous and contested process, and the role of evidence as being only marginally influential. Multiple participants jostle for influence and seek to define what may be regarded as a policy problem, how it may be appropriately addressed, which participants may speak authoritatively, and what knowledge(s) may be brought to bear. The question posited in this article is whether the conceptual shift offered by thinking about policy activity as a process of social construction may be valuable for beginning to explore different perspectives of the evidence-based drug policy endeavour. Within a constructionist account of policy, what counts as valid 'evidence' will always be a constructed notion within a dynamic system, based on the privileging and silencing of participants and discourse, and the contestation of those many positions and perspectives. The social construction account shifts our focus from the inherent value of 'evidence' for addressing 'problems' to the ways in which policy knowledge is made valid, by whom and in what contexts. As such, social construction provides a framework for critically analysing the ways in which 'policy-relevant knowledge' may not be a stable concept but rather one which is constructed through the policy process, and, through a process of validation, is rendered useful. We have limited knowledge in the drug policy field about how this happens; how ambiguity about the problems to be addressed, which voices should be heard, and what activities may be appropriate is contested and managed. By unpicking the values and assumptions which underlie drug policy processes, how problems are constructed and represented, and the ways in which different voices and knowledge(s) come to bear on that process, we may begin to see avenues for reform which may not at present seem obvious.