Recovery and national drug policies: discourse versus actual practice

While recovery has been a predominant policy objective in the UK since 2010, a recovery model was only recently embedded in drug policies in the Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders). As these countries differ substantially in the way in which recovery is translated into national drug policies, assessing structural variations is informative for explaining between-country differences. In this presentation, we critically examine the role of recovery in the drug policies of the three countries. Analyses are based on focus groups with key policy stakeholders (n=3) and interviews with civil servants, politicians, experts-by-experience and practitioners (n=10-15), followed by a thematic analysis of recovery-related drug policy documents. We explore how policy makers understand the process of recovery and how it is realized in a variety of policy activities.