Abstract
Susan Boyd’s From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy provides a thorough examination of how drug policies, both current and historical, have differentially affected the lives of women, and most especially poor and racialized women. Written from a feminist sociological perspective, the book explores the social construction of drug law, looking comparatively at the creation and implementation of drug law and policy in Britain, Canada, and the United States. The author then critically examines how these policies create more harm than good both for the affected women themselves and for their families. Although at times she draws upon her own research and experience with as a social activist, the book is written as a well synthesized and in-depth literature review. In addition to reviewing and criticizing the glaring faults within our current systems, Boyd points to potential solutions that rely on evidence-based research and harm reduction techniques.
The attention-grabbing title, From Witches to Crack Moms, lends some insight into where Boyd begins her work, with the persecution of witches and their use of plants for spiritual practice and healing. While Boyd does not spend a great deal of time and energy discussing witch trials themselves, she effectively uses this discourse as a way of pointing readers to the historical complexity of the role of women in modern Western society, situating the development of drug law and the regulation of women within a historical and social framework. From here, she continues to highlight how moral reformers, temperance ideology, and prohibition movements have helped to shape societal attitudes concerning altered states of consciousness in a largely negative manner. Women who use drugs, Boyd argues, are likely to be considered more deviant than their male counterparts due to the fact that society views them to be the moral providers of the home and the family.
Boyd provides a thorough examination of how the moral regulation of women affects their sexuality and reproduction. In this arena, legal, social service, and medical directives intersect and severely weaken the control a woman has over her own body and ability to reproduce. Fetal rights and child abuse charges applied to the fetus create a path for further criminalization and stigmatization of women who use illicit drugs during pregnancy, and these laws disproportionally affect poor women and women of color. She points out that negative birth outcomes cannot be solely associated with drug use, and that the effects of poverty and limited access to adequate health care during pregnancy must also be considered, although these factors are largely ignored. Drawing upon studies conducted in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Boyd points out that when a mother’s medical and living needs are met during pregnancy, birth outcomes are similar for drug using and nondrug using women.
Using these comparative studies between countries, Boyd addresses the need for harm reduction initiatives, such as needle exchanges and safe injection sites, rather than punitive policies that seek only to punish and further stigmatize drug users. She points out the weaknesses of drug courts and drug treatments, in that they are often inaccessible to those they would benefit most due to the restrictions of poverty and access to adequate legal representation. Further, women who do end up within the prison system due to drug offenses are often treated as although they are a moral hindrance to their families, and lengthy prison sentences for such offences have the negative effect of tearing apart families and increasing the number of children in the foster care system. It is interesting to note that, in reference to foster care, Boyd observes that many women in prison were themselves a product of the foster care system. Additionally, she notes that the treatment of pregnant women in prison in the United States often violates international human rights standards.
Using Colombia as an example, Boyd also takes her discussion to a non-Western perspective, looking closely at how the United States led War on Drugs has negatively impacted women of other countries as well. She argues that decisions concerning the legality of certain drugs are often not made based on their levels of harm, but are politically-based decisions that largely reflect U.S. drug policy. Poor men and women in countries such as Colombia, who cultivate the plants from which illegal drugs (such as cocaine and heroin) are derived are often the most vulnerable to the violence and other negative impacts of the War on Drugs, which we might see as similar to the high levels of incarceration for low-level drug offences in the United States in the way that these policies disproportionately affect poor and marginalized communities.
From Witches to Crack Moms adds a great deal of insight into our current understanding of the gendered effects of the War on Drugs from a local to global level. Her extensive review of the current literature and reliance on scholarly sources as well as legal research makes this book a well-rounded and well-organized overview of drug policy and its effects in the both the Western and non-Western world. In addition to her thorough criticism of current drug law, she clearly points out areas for reform and studies that show the benefits of harm reduction initiatives. Furthermore, ideas for future research are found throughout the book. In addition to her work as a professor at the University of Victoria, Susan Boyd is actively involved with organizations that work to end drug prohibition in Canada as well as groups that provide harm reduction services and has published and written extensively about drug law and policy and the representations of women in the criminal justice system. While the book’s writing style and language make it accessible to a mainstream audience, it is also well suited for classroom use. It would make a great addition a drugs and crime-based course as well as courses that may employ a feminist theoretical approach.