Substance Use, Stigma and Social Harm

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) brings together new interdisciplinary analyses of the impacts of substance use, stigma and social harm on health and social inequalities during a time of global upheaval. This arises partly out of the WHO’s agenda for social justice in which they advocate that everyone should have the same opportunities to lead a healthy life. However, we are witnessing a worrying escalation in drug-related deaths in the UK and globally (4,561 deaths related to drug poisoning) [1]. We know that drug use has increased for frequent users during and after the global pandemic, and the number of drug-related offences increased by 30% between April and June 2020 in the UK [1]. These increases and subsequent increases in the need and demand for services have also aligned with a public and political hardening of attitudes and stigmatisation towards people who use drugs (PWUD) [2,3], cuts to public services as a result of ‘austerity economics’, and an increase in a criminal justice response to drug use as a means of reducing social harm [4].

There is an urgent need for insights into the health and social harms arising from stigma which is weaponised against vulnerable groups [5] who use drugs, as well as critical engagement with systems of power and privilege that reproduce social harm. The focus here on social harm, as an analytical framework, presents an opportunity to develop an understanding of how socially mediated injury and public and private stigma overlaps with social and health inequalities and criminalisation at a time where the global ‘cost of living crisis’, food and energy poverty, and the aftermath of the global pandemic are acutely impacting the most vulnerable and marginalised in society [6].

Furthermore, we call for a fundamental reorientation in public health, social care, and criminal justice systems which can add to, rather than mitigate, social harm towards vulnerable groups who use drugs. In doing so, we invite scholars to creatively and critically rethink how drug use could be framed, navigated, and addressed in these systems to better support people who use drugs and reduce the harms that are generated via everyday stigmatisation. This involves moving attention ‘upstream’ to structural and contextual factors that can shape drug use and critically engaging with toxic individualising rhetoric that presents drug use as a ‘problem of the person’ [3,7]. We ask scholars and readers to engage in debate that addresses the questions: ‘Why does stigma persist?’ and ‘whose interests does stigmatisation serve?’ when public health and criminal justice systems engage with PWUD. In doing so, we turn attention to how and why stigma is weaponised against PWUD and how this generates unfair and unjust health and social harms impacting marginalised and minoritised communities the most.

This Special Issue shines a light on the lives and voices of communities of people who have past or present experience of using drugs, as well as the practitioners who provide support services. In doing so, we are particularly interested in power imbalances and intersectional oppressions reproduced by structural inequalities and experienced by these people.

We are also hopeful of (radical) change and encourage scholars, practitioners, and readers to develop creative and pragmatic solutions and recommendations that address the problem of stigma and social harm impacting the lives of people who use drugs both within and across public health and criminal justice systems. As such, we invite scholars to address the following questions:

• How and why is stigma weaponised against people who use drugs?
• What social and health harms arise from stigma connected to drug use? We are particularly interested in a focus on mental health.
• How is stigma variously experienced by PWUD from within and across different stages of the criminal justice system, social care, and public health services?
• How is stigma identified, negotiated, resisted, or refused by people who use drugs at different stages of the life course and across different intersections of identity?
• How does the stigmatisation of people who use drugs impact on a person’s sense of inclusion in society?
• Does stigma harm people who use drugs equally, or is this unevenly experienced?
• How can we imagine criminal justice systems and public health differently so that they operate to reduce social harm experienced by PWUD?

Presenting original and distinctive research, this Special Issue will showcase a range of research designs and will have broad appeal to an international audience given the scope of involvement and focus on public health, criminology, sociology, social psychology, psychology, and social work. New research papers, reviews and case reports are invited to be submitted to this issue. Other manuscript types also accepted include methodological papers, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries.

References

1. Office for National Statistics. Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2020. Available online: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/
   drugmisuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020 (accessed on 16 November 2022).
2. Wacquant, L. Urban Outcasts: A Comparitive Sociology of Advanced Marginality; Polity Press: Cambridge, UK, 2008.
3. Addison, M. Framing Stigma as an Avoidable Social Harm that Widens Inequality. Sociol. Rev. 2023.
4. HM Government. From harm to hope: A 10-year drugs plan to cut crime and save lives. Available online: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/from-harm-to-hope-a-10-year-drugs-plan-to-cut-crime-and-save-lives (accessed on 16 November 2022).
5. Scambler, G. Heaping blame on shame: 'Weaponising stigma' for neoliberal times. Sociol. Rev. 2018, 66, 766–782.
6. Pemberton, S.; Pantazis, C.; Hillyard, P. Poverty and social harm: Challenging discourses of risk, resilience and choice. Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK: Volume 2 - The Dimensions of Disadvantage, 1st ed.; Polity Press: Cambridge, UK, 2017.
7. Drugs, Identity and Stigma, 1st ed.; Addison, M.; McGovern, W.; McGovern, R., Eds.; Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK, 2022.

Dr. Michelle Addison
Dr. William McGovern
Dr. Jesse Proudfoot
Guest Editors

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• stigma
• social harm
• health and social inequality
• public health and social care
• criminal justice