Discussant response to J. Tsiganou 'Drugs, Crime and Criminal Justice'

It is not the task of the discussant to answer all of the questions raised. This would be difficult in relation to the complexity of the topic and impossible in the space remaining in a conclusion. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning some possible directions. The first has already been made by Tsiganou in that more needs to be known about the way in which international policies interact with domestic policies, and the ways in which these act upon societies and the individuals within them. The second is that these issues could be more profitably discussed if more research were done on the decision-making processes of governments at all levels of policy-making. Case studies of specific examples of policy generation would be useful in identifying the interplay between national and international interests as well as the role of evidence and politics in this process. The third concluding point is that more research needs to be done on the characteristics of post-modern societies, a strong feature of which is the trend towards globalisation and internationalism, as well as the subversion of local interest s to broader concerns. A better understanding of the global context might be the key to taking forward the current debate relating to the origins and motives of international drugs policy and its assimilation into domestic controls.