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This paper examines a discrete set of issues pertaining to the constitution of addiction in law. Based on qualitative interviews undertaken with lawyers in Australia and Canada, I examine how addiction figures in lawyers' daily practice. Drawing on ideas from science and technology studies scholars Sheila Jasanoff, Michael Lynch and Bruno Latour, and building on recent research I undertook on legal addiction veridiction, I explore the constitution of addiction 'facts' in law. I examine how and when lawyers claim to make decisions about addiction in the course of their legal practice. Lawyers report playing a central role in the making of decisions about addiction, at multiple stages of the legal process including: before taking cases on, while running cases in court, and while negotiating and/or settling cases. I argue that these decisions can be properly described as 'quasi-expert' determinations with important parallels to scientific, technological and medical claims often made in legal settings by more conventional 'expert witnesses'. I call these 'quasi-expert' decisions because they are decisions of the kind that might be assumed to be the purview of scientific or medical experts and because they have tangible implications for clients. Lawyers uniquely constitute addiction in unique ways, drawing on a combination of factors, including their own experience with and observations about addiction, the experiences of family members who have experienced alcohol and other drug problems, relevant legal concepts and frameworks, popular and scientific claims about addiction, emotions and values, including the gender politics of alcohol and other drug addiction. These addiction 'facts' can have a range of material and discursive effects, including potentially adverse implications for people characterised as 'addicts'. I conclude the paper with a discussion of some implications of these practices, and with reflections on how we might address these issues in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Canada has announced that it will legalize cannabis on October 17, 2018, and as a result of this impending drug law reform the need to develop prevention resources and drug education - in schools, in public health, and for parents - has emerged as a public concern and a policy priority. Set against this context, the aim of our paper is to amplify the parent perspective on preventing problematic adolescent cannabis use, but also to interrogate the idea of 'parents as the best prevention' that has taken hold in discussions about the potential consequences of legalization for youth.Methods: In 2016 we undertook an exploratory, qualitative interview study in Vancouver, British Columbia (n = 16) with parents of adolescents who had used cannabis. Building on our past research developing educator-led resources to support an open dialogue about cannabis in the classroom, in this study we asked parents about the supports and resources they needed to inform their discussions about cannabis with their adolescent children, as well the challenges they faced in responding to cannabis use when they believed it had become problematic.Findings: Across the interviews, parents mobilized discourses of risk and responsibility for preventing problematic cannabis use that appeared to reinstate individualizing accounts of substance use. Many echoed normative ideas about health, the risks of cannabis use, and 'good' parenting, sidestepping social inequities around drug use, and thus implicating parents and families as solely responsible for preventing adolescent drug use.Conclusion: Our analysis suggests how parents have been largely disempowered and unsupported when it comes to addressing adolescent drug use in the family context. Even as they expressed their awareness that formal supports and resources to assist them were lacking, parents also assigned blame to themselves - or to other parents - for 'failing' to prevent problematic cannabis use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper includes the voices of people who are members of a peer-led drug user group (SNAP) in Canada who are receiving heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) outside of a clinical trial. Drawing from critical drug studies, we problematize the criteria for severe opioid use disorder (OUD) from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, by exploring SNAP members' experiences in relation to heroin-assisted treatment, and examining how SNAP participants' narratives challenge conventional notions of what constitutes severe opioid use disorder.Method: Drawing on critical analysis and research guidelines developed by drug user unions and organizations, and critical methodological frameworks on ethical community-based-and-responsive research for social justice, in this paper we focus on semi-structured interviews conducted with 36 SNAP members at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users site in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada. We included opened ended questions about experiences prior to receiving HAT, experiences while receiving HAT, experiences of drug use and cessation, and future hopes.Results: Although SNAP participants were diagnosed as suffering from OUD, the DSM-5 criteria for OUD fails to encompass their diverse experiences of opioid use. Nor does the DSM diagnosis capture the complexities of their lived experience. The DSM OUD constructs an idea of addiction and the addicted person based on a list of symptoms thought to be associated with extended use of opioids. The problem with this is that many of these "symptoms" of drug use are, in the case of SNAP participants, tied to contextual issues of living in the DTES, experiencing structural vulnerability, and being the target of punitive drug policies and laws.Conclusion: To label someone as having a severe disorder shifts the focus from political and social issues, including the lived experiences of people who use heroin. The DSM-5 de-contextualizes drug use. How addiction and heroin are constituted has political implications that will determine what types of services and programs will be set up. Treating a disorder, or a person with a disorder, requires a much different approach than understanding heroin use as a habit. SNAP, and their allies, are rupturing conventional ideas about heroin and taken for granted assumptions about people who use heroin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]