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.

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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 municipal government documents and national and local newspaper articles in both jurisdictions to make my argument, along with secondary data from published literature. In the process, I highlight the strengths and weaknesses of Kingdon's (1984) work for understanding policy development in the highly controversial area of illicit drug use.

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.