The Canadian government recently sanctioned a supervised consumption site (SCS) that is currently in Vancouver, British Columbia. The government is open to sanctioning more sites across the country; however, by law the federal health minister must consider whether such facilities are supported by local governments representing the cities where the sites are proposed to be located. Until 2016, the government of Canada's largest city, Toronto, did not support SCSs. Drawing on Lenton cannabis policy research, this study analyses government documents, policy papers, scientific reports, and newspaper articles and secondary literature to identify some of the significant barriers that minimised the likelihood that Toronto's council would support SCSs between 2003 and 2016. The report compares conditions in Toronto to those of Vancouver where SCSs have enjoyed council support since 2001. This study find that three conditions play an important role in explaining why SCSs were supported in Vancouver 14 years before they were endorsed in Toronto: (1) Strong public support; (2) Favourable electoral conditions; and (3) Law enforcement support. Changes in Toronto surrounding these conditions help explain why its council endorsed SCSs in 2016. This study concludes that Lenton's research holds utility as a socio-legal theory of municipal drug policy change.

The UK was a trailblazer in needle syringe programming (NSP), having established fifteen facilities by 1987, ahead of most other countries around the world at the time. By 1993, roughly 300 programs were operating in all parts of the country. Canada opened its first NSP in 1989, not long after the first programs opened in the UK. In stark contrast to the UK, however, over the same period of time, substantially fewer NSPs opened in Canada. By 1994, only thirty NSPs were operating in only four of ten provinces (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta). Drawing on government records, policy documents, newspaper articles, and secondary literature, this paper seeks to better understand how and why NSP policy developed and evolved differently in both countries between the years 1985 and 1995. Utilizing social constructionism and political sociology as analytical frameworks, this paper argues that each country’s divergent political structures help to explain cross-national variations in drug policy development.

Scholarship is divided over whether youth from marginalized populations are stopped and searched by police primarily due to their illegal behaviours (functionalism), marginalized status (conflict theory), or both. We address this debate by comparing the police interactions experienced by a sample of high school students (N = 3,393) living at home with a sample of youth (N = 396) who have left home and are residing in shelters or on the streets of Toronto, Ontario. Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that after controlling for demographic and behavioural factors, black high school students are more likely than white high school students to report being stopped and searched by the police multiple times; this indicates that they are the victims of racially biased policing. In contrast, black and white street youth are equally likely to report being stopped and searched by the police on multiple occasions. We suggest that this is because all street youth, regardless of race, take part in high levels of deviant behaviour, which attracts police attention. We conclude that consensus theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of street youth, whereas conflict theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of black high school students.

In this article, I compare and contrast policymaking processes in Canada and England and Wales between 1997 and the present day to provide insight into why the Canadian government approved the opening of a downtown Vancouver drug consumption room (DCR) named InSite in 2003, and why the British government has not yet done so. I also shed new light on why, since 2003, subsequent DCRs have not been opened in either Canada or England and Wales. I briefly consider future prospects for DCRs in both places. To accomplish this, I draw on Kingdon’s “Multiple Streams Theory,” which suggests that national government decision makers such as politicians are most likely to enact policy changes when there is an alignment of problems, policy options, and political circumstances. I argue that such conditions existed in Canada but not England and Wales, which helps explain why the Canadian government approved the opening of a DCR but the British government did not. I draw on primary data from national, provincial, and muni...

In this theoretical ‘think piece’, I question whether Stanley Cohen’s (1972) ‘folk devil’ and ‘moral panic’ concepts are as inseparable as current sociological and criminological research suggests. Thus far, the vast majority of crime and deviance scholars have treated the folk devil as just one sub-part of the moral panic concept, rather than considering it to be a distinct concept. Consequently, the social processes leading to the creation of folk devils have been largely under-theorized compared to the social processes underlying moral panics. I propose that folk devils and moral panics be conceptualized as two distinct social phenomena. I present evidence from news articles published in the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulated newspaper, which illustrates how individuals can be labeled as folk devils when moral panics are not taking place. I conclude by considering how a distinct, folk devil research program can contribute to studies in the sociology of ‘evil’.