Illicit drug policies and social outcomes: a cross-country analysis

This study aims to measure the impact that different drug-related legal frameworks have on society. Different countries have different views on what should be illicit concerning drugs and, therefore, enact their own drug laws and policy. Drug production, distribution and use in each country depends on societal characteristics (demographic, cultural, economic), but also on that country’s drug policy. Our aim is to study the relationship between countries’ drug laws and policies and key social indicators, by implementing, first, a state-of-theart comparative law technique that allows cross-country comparisons of drug laws, with a particular focus on cannabis.