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6/7 Scheduling - Critical analysis of the concept

  • Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy
  • May 3, 2016
  • 5 min read

Beyond the abnormalities and lack of scientific ground found in the precedent article, the problematic around the current IDCR scheduling system - which consequently distort the application and the coherence of the treaties - is the conception of the drugs themselves, which embody what is called a notion of “pharmacological determinism.” (TNI, 2014a) In this regard, the Transnational Institute notes that it “implies that the effects of drugs stem simply and unproblematically from their pharmacological properties, and are fixed, stable and universal in character.” (TNI, 2014a)

As described by scholar Angus Bancroft (2009) and countless of other sociological, historical and cultural analysis, the effects of a drug are never solely caused by their chemical recipe, but rather, “powerfully influenced by the dosage and mode of administration, by cultural beliefs and suppositions surrounding their use, the legislative and enforcement context, the policy setting, surrounding social attitudes toward drug consumers, the age, the physical and psychological makeup of the user, the subcultural setting and the role of the drug in identity formation, and so on.” In other words, the environment, often much more than the product itself, can be predominantly responsible for the effect of one substance. This is never acknowledged by the current IDCR scheduling processes.

Several scholars (Kleiman & al., 2011) have proposed several questions, which can help understand the degree of differences that a given drug would have on a person depending on:

  • “how many people have tried it (the initiation rate and age, which drives lifetime prevalence);

  • the rate at which people who have tried a drug keep using it (continuation);

  • how risky the drug is even if not used in a diagnosably problematic manner (getting drunk once isn’t clinically, ‘alcohol abuse’, but getting drunk once and then driving can be fatal);

  • how much harm the drug causes, to users and others, in a typical moth of casual use;

  • the proportion of continuing users who go on to develop problematic use patterns (the ‘capture rate’ from use to abuse);

  • how much harm the drug causes, to users and others, in a typical moth of problem use;

  • how long someone with a bad habit around the drug typically uses before quitting (or cutting back to moderate use) for the first time - the persistence, or chronicity of abuse;

  • how likely someone who has quit or cut back is to return to problem use (the relapse rate);

  • how long, and how severely users of the drug continue to suffer from the consequence of their use as a result of cognitive deficit or disease.”

These questions, can arguably not easily be fitted within even the most efficient scheduling system. Relying heavily on the paper “Questioning the method and utility of ranking drug harms in drug policy” written by Steve Rolles and Fiona Measham (2011) and published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, we will intent to question the very principle of the concept of drug classification.

As explained by the two researchers, “drug risk/harm assessments can serve two primary functions: firstly, to inform policy development and secondly, to support public education, both with the aim of minimising drug-related harms.” As such, even with the welcomed MCDA model (presented in the precedent article) “key conceptual challenges remain.” Indeed, the complexity of drug consumption is rather difficult to holistically conceptualize, and even more to put in practice. It could be further argued that focusing on rational and objective criteria can not possibly, even remotely, reflect the multiple ways mind altering substances are consumed. Indeed, a scheduling system intending to create an evidence based model would have to integrate a reality encompassing “determinants of risk/harm reflect pharmacology translated through a complex prism of social, behavioural and environmental variables, in turn influenced by a range of differing policy regimes, from prohibition through to legal regulation. This complexity (can) not practically captured with a single figure index.” (Rolles & Measham, 2011)

Accordingly, we can view the concept of scheduling as having several effects. Among them is the creation of a window of opportunity for designing drug analogs, that are still technically legal because they have somehow small differences in their chemical structure counterparts. This loophole is very difficult to close as we will see in a later article and the New Zealand tentative to regulate New Psychoactive Substances (NPS). In addition, some analogs can often have other uses, especially in scientific and medical research and applications, which further complicate the application of the concept.

Furthermore, a scheduling model, even one as the MCDA model, often conflates physical and social harms. Often significantly, models “largely fail to disaggregate the harms associated with use per se from the harms that result from the policy environment." (1) (Rolles & Measham, 2011) Policy context matters quite significantly, especially in between prescribed/supervised and illicit supply/use situations. Legal markets for international scheduled substances do exist and the harms associated to such market should be integrated within scheduling models in order to be able to compare harms between regulated and illegal markets. Finally, as we briefly discussed in the precedent article and will analyze further in a dedicated paper, “pleasure remains both an underdeveloped concept in drug research and conspicuously absent from much mainstream drug policy discourse despite its evident centrality to drug using motivations.” (Moore, 2008. See also: Moore & Measham, 2011)

For these different reasons, the concept of scheduling could arguably be considered as inconsistent, to the best. As rightfully noted by Juan Fernández Ochoa from the IDPC, these lead us to other critical questions that are yet to have been answered by actors in the field: "Should we abolish international scheduling? What gaps would it leave and how would they be filled?"Our modern necessity to measure, integrate, compartmentalize and the sub-sequent believe that it allows us to reduce risks to an imaginary low-point remains particularly integrated in the way we view and apply policy making.

However, in fine, what makes the current scheduling system probably outsourced and easily outdated is the way drugs and consumption mechanisms can change extremely rapidly, rendering any tentatives to schedule them, almost doomed to become irrelevant. With the already current arrival of designer drugs, what else are drugs and drug use going to look like in the future? We will find out in the next and last article dedicated to the topic.

(1) If we take the example of two groups of individuals, consuming heroin through injection: “the first is committing high volumes of crime to fund their illicit habit, using ‘street’ heroin (of unknown strength and purity) with dirty, possibly shared needles in unsupervised and unsanitary environments. Their supplies are purchased from a criminal dealing/trafficking infrastructure that can be traced back to illicit production in Afghanistan. They have HIV, Hepatitis C and a long, and growing, criminal record. The second uses legally manufactured and prescribed pharmaceutical diamorphine of known strength and purity in a supervised, clinical setting, with clean injecting paraphernalia. There is no link to failing drug producer states; no criminality, profiteering or violence involved at any stage of the drug's production, supply or use; no blood borne disease transmission risk; a near zero risk of overdose death; and no offending to fund use.” (Rolles & Measham, 2011).


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