Associate Editor’s Introduction: Sharpening the Focus— Taking Into Account the Socio-Materiality of Drug Control and Prevention

Abstract

Drug use is an inherently socio-material practice. Drugs are material, as are the bodies that consume them. Likewise, drug control and prevention practices heavily rely on material infrastructures, especially technical objects which enable control and prevention measures by materializing drug use-in the sense of documenting it, hence rendering it intelligible. Ranging from the installation of alcoholinterlock-systems in cars to devices simulating the alcohol experience (e.g., "drunk goggles") or drug testing kits, technologically-based practices aim to prevent and/or detect the use of psychoactive substances, although the specifics of the technology and their underlying rationales (e.g., secondary and tertiary prevention, simulated experience) may differ.Although drug effects and forms of harm are shaped by material-discursive practices, there is a need for more critical work on these issues. This special issue aims to set the stage for a focused discussion on the relationship between drug control and prevention strategies and their materiality-as fundamental prerequisites for materializing drug consumption, "harms," "effects," and/or "impairment." By adopting a socio-material perspective to study such technologies, drug control and prevention practices can be fruitfully analyzed in new ways. When approaching drug control from a socio-material perspective, sensitized to the agency of technical artifacts and/or technical infrastructures, new research questions and empirical methods arise. For example, where responsibility for controlling drug use or preventing drug effects is delegated to technological artifacts, there is the potential for stricter control strategies and more punitive approaches. Other questions concern the new possibilities for action that emerge from processes of technification, whether in drug control (e.g., new drug detection methods), or prevention (e.g. intoxication simulation devices). How is drug consumption discovered and labeled as (mis)use through the utilization of technical instruments and/or material infrastructures (e.g., drug tests, laboratories)? What indicators are used in the course of this and how reliable are they? How do inscribed standards (Akrich, 1992) such as threshold values for (in)appropriate alcohol or other drug use manifest materially and what effects does this have on bringing drug (mis)use into being? How are (material) bodies used as information resources in order to detect drug (mis)use (Aas, 2006;van der Ploeg, 2005)? Last but not least: Which kinds of technical/material mediation support the drug control through personalized monitoring and surveillance and how do consumers feel about this?When drug research has acknowledged socio-material perspectives, it has been predominantly concerned with the agency of drugs "themselves" (see Fraser, 2020) or the agency of people who use drugs. The whole concept of "addiction" has always mobilized highly contradictory questions of agency and the emergence of neuroscientific approaches to addiction research have resulted in...

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