Recent events
Second Alison Chesney and Eddie Killoran Memorial Lecture
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KAC and the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour, with generous support from the World Bank, organised the second annual Alison Chesney & Eddie Killoran Memorial Lecture . This year we were delighted to welcome Dr Rosalie Pacula, Co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Centre, in California, who delivered the lecture on 'Substance Use and Recessions: Insights from economic analyses of alcohol and how drug use differs'. See the lecture and lecture slides here.
Dr Pacula is a well known and respected academic and researcher, with extensive experience of investigating and evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of national, state, and local public policies aimed at diminishing substance use and abuse as well as their social costs, including crime, productivity losses, treatment, child welfare, and other problems. She has been a member of the US National Bureau of Economic Research since 1997, participating in the Health Economics Programme, Children Programme, and Economics and Crime Workgroup and is an Assistant Editor for the journal Addiction.
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In the lecture Dr Pacula summarized the latest scientific findings of the impact of economic recessions on drug supply, drug use and the consequences of use, drawing on numerous parallels with the alcohol supply and consumption. In doing so she provided the audience with an understanding of how the general economy impacts on drug markets (both supply and demand) using simple economic principles and the extent to which we see these economic mechanisms dominate, or get dominated by other social and psychological mechanisms. Insights from this review are useful for thinking about how policy might adjust during periods of economic downturns and/or upturns in developed economies so as to better address the needs and consequences of these markets.
The lecture was particularly apposite, with the recent global recession and financial crisis of 2009 decimating national budgets, and substantially reducing the ability in nations to provide financial support to address a range of important social and public health problems. In the case of addiction services the impact of reduced budgets to support prevention and treatment is believed to be made worse by a common held belief that the use of intoxicating substances goes up during periods of economic downturns. The science supporting this belief is actually quite mixed, and indeed evidence from the alcohol literature suggests that the relationship is quite the opposite, with heavy drinking declining during periods of significant economic downturn in developed countries.
The lecture took place on 19th October 2011 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
We are grateful to the World Bank for their financial support for this year’s lecture.