Throughout Europe - from town halls and regional governments, through national Parliaments and ministries, to the high institutions of the European Union - there runs a vigorous debate on organised crime, municipal safety and private conduct. Drug problems and what to do about them often occupy center-stage at these debates.
Throughout the 1990s the focus of legal attention has been primarily on the criminal law. New criminal offenses have been created, partly in response to influences `from above' (from international and European agreements) and partly in response to pressure `from below' (concerns of citizens at national and sub-national levels). But although criminal law certainly is important as far as the development of drug controls is concerned, it is by no means the whole story. There is a parallel history, a regulatory one, consisting of the increasing use of administrative measures, some of which are directly concerned with drugs while others are more general but equally applicable. These responses, together with civil law, variously function as adjuncts to criminal law or as alternatives to it, in relation to drug trafficking at European and national levels, drug-related public nuisance as it concerns citizens at municipal level, and drug users.
After charting existing measures in the legal orders of Member states and of the Community, Regulating European Drug Problems looks at prospects for administrative drug controls after Amsterdam - in the context of the development of the Single Market, cooperation against crime and insecurity, subsidiarity, and human rights.
At a practical level, the study offers provocative ideas to policy-makers and administrators working at the intersection of city-level, national, and European responses to drugs. For scholars and students, the book offers comparative legal research and European synthesis, and forges new links between fields of law, suppresion of organised crime, and economic and social regulation.