Does fear of sanctions or sanctions discourage drug use? The point of view of a sample of illegal drug users in Italy

Abstract

Italian law prohibits the consumption of illegal drugs and states that anyone found in possession of a small amount of these drugs must be reported to the territorial government office (TGO). The Prefect summons the consumer to ascertain the reasons for the illegal behaviour and to assess whether to apply an administrative sanction. The purpose of this mandatory interview is to dissuade the consumer from repeating the same behaviour. In this article, we present the results of a study that aims to analyze the deterrent effectiveness of this procedure on a sample of 330 consumers reported to the TGOs of nine Italian cities. The results of the research indicate a rather limited special deterrent effectiveness of the administrative procedure, as nine out of ten of those interviewed declared that they continued to use illegal psychoactive substances after going through the procedure. The reasons explaining this failure are related to the perception of the risk of being discovered, the evaluation of the consequences of the sanction, opinion about the law, and the effectiveness of the treatment imposed with the threat of a sanction. Our results are consistent with the empirical evidence provided by the literature on the same topic.

Notes

1. This study was funded by the Italian Ministero della Solidarietà Sociale. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the funding agency.

2. As Room et al. (2008, pp. 125–126) noted, we must be cautious in interpreting these evidences ‘for a number of reasons. Firstly, the policy environment is a dynamic one where effects decay and the policy that is implemented changes over time (…). Secondly, international comparisons are difficult and results can be confounded by cultural, political, geographic and climatic differences. Thirdly, cannabis law reform often occurs in locations with high rates of use. This means that pre-post or longitudinal designs with matched control locations are need to identify true impacts on rates of cannabis use (…). Fourthly, evaluations rarely take into account the level of knowledge in the community about the laws which apply to cannabis (…). Finally, any research evidence may not predict the effects of new reforms in other locations, because the impacts of future cannabis policy reforms may depend on contextual factors and on how the reforms are implemented’.

3. According to a study carried out on a sample of social workers of twenty Italian TGOs (Prina, 2011), the vast majority of drug users reported to TGOs are young, uses illegal drugs for recreational purposes, are found in possession of cannabis, are picked up by the police in public places, during week-ends, evenings or at night. It is likely, therefore, that the users reported to TGOs are not representative of Italian consumers of illegal drugs in general, but are users who adopt specific behaviours that expose them to the risk of being stopped by the police and reported to a TGO.

4. The Italian parliament has approved a law that toughens the sanction for drug users reported to the TGOs: the driving licence can be suspended for 36 months (the previous measure envisaged suspension for up to 12 months). This regulation generates a paradox: a citizen caught driving in their own car with a level of alcohol of between 0.80 and 1.5 g l⁻¹ would risk the suspension of their licence for from 6 to 12 months, while a citizen stopped on foot, not under the effect of drugs but found possessing a small quantity of an illegal drug for personal use could risk the suspension of the driving licence for 36 months. This paradox exemplifies well what we mean by negative impact on civil liberties.