New trends in regulating the use of psychotropic drugs: Thirty years of policy on the use of drugs and drug addiction in Quebec (1976-2006)
In 1976, the Quebec Government adopted its very first policy specifically dedicated to the issue of drug use and abuse. Following this, under the governance of the Quebec health department, a series of plans of action and mission statements were created to frame and orient the philosophy and intervention approaches in regard to drug addiction. By offering the results of an analysis of various Quebec policy papers dealing with the drug issue, we propose to better identify the type of transformations introduced from 1976 to 2006 in the way in which interventions with drug addicts are defined. We will attempt to validate the hypothesis according to which the issue of providentialism, and the passage to what Europeans define as the Socially Active State, are going to contribute to redefining drug addiction intervention approaches. These political shifts now result in the recognition of new regulatory principles to guide drug addiction interventions, such as (1) the importance assigned to the individual’s accountability and independence; (2) the questioning of institutionalizing the beneficiary in favour of an intervention in the community; and finally (3) the priority assigned to preventive rather than reactive actions.