VIDEO 30mins: Barriers to Recovery: Exclusion, Stigma & Discrimination
- PODCAST 60mins: Is the harm caused by drugs or drug policy?
- Film Exchange on Alcohol and Drugs: 9 short videos
- Examining Drugs, Crime and Criminalisation: An Online Prezi Presentation
- Research Repository: 15 submissions for download
- Ideas Wales Think Tank: Imagining a Drug Policy Fit for Purpose
- Drug Testing Technology Damaging Policy and Practice
- New Labour’s Drug Policy Legacy
Born and brought up in a poor close-knit working class area of Liverpool, one of 5 children. Life in Anfield became much harder after my father died (aged 46) – but it provided rich experience of poverty and family struggle. Disengaged at school I left aged 17 and began work at Liverpool Social Services. Through employment began my interest in professional and academic qualifications. After qualifying as a social worker in 1983 I joined the Merseyside Probation Service. In the mid late 1980s I worked at the ‘coalface’ as a drugs worker and was instrumental in conceptualizing and promoting a ‘risk reduction’ approach (Buchanan & Wyke 1987) adopted into Merseyside Probation drug policy, and helped establish what was one of the largest multi-agency community drugs teams in the UK – the South Sefton Drugs Team. I left probation work to continue research and writing worked as lecturer at Liverpool University, before moving on to University of Central Lancashire (England) and Glyndwr University (Wales). I moved to the Institute of Criminology Victoria University of Wellington, (New Zealand) in 2011. Throughout my career I have maintained a strong interest in the interplay between, inequality, crime, problematic drug use and drug policy/practice and I’ve published widely on these issues.
Particularly interests include:
- problem drug use
- drugs and crime
- social exclusion and social reintegration
- criminal justice/injustice
- racism and the criminal justice system
- parental drug use
- drug interventions and treatment
- online learning
Julian Buchanan CPA, CQSW, DSW, MA, FHEA, PhD
- julianbuchanan@gmail.com
http://vuw.academia.edu/JulianBuchanan/Research_Interests
- twitter: julianbuchanan
http://www.scoop.it/t/drugs-society
Please note the views expressed are entirely my own and do not represent or reflect my employer

Thank you Julian for your intelligent, relevant and erudite comments. If only the law-makers were so well equipped………………. Piet
By: Piet on 21 April 2010
at 9:49 pm
I really liked the Prezi (NZ drug policy symposium) you posted on twitter. You named some interesting people from the lake district. Here is a link to show you the house where Thomas De Quincy lived and where Samuel Taylor Coleridge died with Wordsworth by his side. I have an interest in the lives of the poets of the lakes and have been a drug worker since 1995.
I hope you like it http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2325792
Roweena
hiwecanhelp.com
By: hiwecanhelp (@hiwecanhelp) on 30 August 2011
at 9:32 am
http://www.scoop.it/t/drugs-society/js?format=square&numberOfPosts=6&title=Drugs%20%26%20Society&speed=3&mode=normal&width=300
By: julianbuchanan on 8 November 2011
at 8:59 am
Hi Julian, love your banner. I think prejudice and discrimination are two important words which need to be brought into the public realm in connection with how society treats drug users. Persecution is another word I like…
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, caste system and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation, imprisonment, fear, or pain are all factors that may establish persecution.
By: Matt Riley on 3 December 2012
at 12:16 pm