For an Anti-Colonial Drug Policy
Dr Kev Dertadian
When: 30 September 2026, 1pm – 2pm AEST
Where: Deakin Burwood Campus, LC Building
Should we decolonise drug policy? Yes, we should. Is it possible to decolonise drug policy? No, not really – well, not yet anyway. In this paper I outline how the field’s understanding of both ‘drugs’ and ‘policy’ are intimately tied to, and inseparable from, colonial relations of power. Black and Indigenous intellectual traditions have argued that colonialisation is ongoing and reproduced through the institutions and knowledge practices of settler colonial societies. Policy itself refers to plans, principles or rules adopted by government and government agencies, which are all colonial impositions on what is now called Australia. The colonial state defines what a drug is, if and how it is criminalised, what resources are devoted to interdiction and regulation, and so policy, and by extension drug policy, is largely an appeal to these colonial constructs. This creates ethical and practical tensions in critical drugs scholarship and in drug policy interested in social justice outcomes, which are yet to be resolved.
In this paper I explore these tensions, and how to navigate them, by arguing for a less academic and more political engagement with decolonial praxis in drug policy. This means drug policy and scholarship that is less concerned with epistemological and ontological questions about how to decolonise drug policy, and more concerned with the ‘doing’ of anti-colonial work. In outlining what this might look like, I draw inspiration from the words of Aboriginal, Māori, and Takatāpui (queer) scholar Latoya Rule, who notes that ‘Abolition offers a decolonial future’. For drug policy, I posit that this means advancing policy that reduces the reach and scale of the colonial-carceral state, and which facilitates the imagination and enactment of alternative responses to drug harm by centring the self-determination of those dispossessed by colonial violence. When applied beyond its impact on colonised peoples, a related logic of centring the concerns and practical strategies of groups stigmatised and minoritised by colonial violence can be advanced. This means asking critical questions about how community-led responses, like harm reduction, are currently conceived and how they are might better be positioned as against the colonial project.
Dr Kev Dertadian:
George (Kev) Dertadian, Ph.D. is a social researcher who conducts field-based research with people who use drugs, including the non-medical use of pharmaceuticals and injection drug use, and among marginalised as well as structurally advantaged people who use drugs. He is interested in alcohol and other drugs, the sociology of crime and deviance, and social and cultural theory. Kev advocates for non-carceral responses to drug use, with a particular focus on harm reduction. He is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology as part of the School of Law, Society and Criminology in the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales.
Share