Drug diversion schemes appear as a beneficial alternative to the harms of drug policing and the war on drugs. In reality, they maintain and expand the police’s reach, power and legitimacy.

Imani Robinson notes that harm reduction’s foundations in a radical critique of punishment provides a platform to build alliances between movements that seek to dismantle the ‘war on drugs’ and other other carceral systems.

In this excerpt from the panel entitled The Transmission Line: Empire & Abolition, Kojo Koram sheds light on how hegemonic approaches to drugs since the mid-19th century have served the expansion of the carceral state and imperialism.

The use of drug criminalisation as the legal basis for some 60% of all stops in England and Wales exemplifies the role of punitive drug policy in expanding the reach and harms of policing.

WHRIN and TalkingDrugs highlight how women and non-binary people who use drugs are developing responses to the harms at the intersection of gender and drug prohibition in ways that provide space to collectively heal and undermine systems of policing, punishment and surveillance.