LIST OF PANELS

Justification:

Alcohol, drug, and tobacco (ADT) use has devastating health, social, and economic consequences (Cartwright, 2008; Goodchild, 2018; Nosrati et al., 2019). ADT use disorders are among the leading causes of death and disability in people aged 15-49 in high-income countries (. Most notably, ADT use is the major risk factor for death and disability among this age and income/geographic group (GBD, 2019). As ADT policies enshrine principles and practices associated with these substances' production, distribution, possession, and use, jurisdictions can act through multiple institutional mechanisms (Rogeberg, 2018). However, these mechanisms can sometimes complement, contradict, or not recognize each other's influences or contributions. In short, while harms associated with using ADT may demand an all-encompassing public health approach, questions regarding the dialogues between policies regulating these substances, where other approaches interject, remain notably absent

At least two sources influence policies' shapes and trajectories in these three realms across jurisdictions. On the one hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended multiple policies to curb alcohol- and tobacco-related harms. These interventions include common elements, such as tax and price increases, reduction of availability, enforcement of advertising, promotion, and sponsorship bans (WHO, 2017). On the other, the scenario for drug policy reflects more clearly the tensions between efforts to prohibit or regulate drug supply and use (Bewley & Taylor, 2012; Hall, 2018) For sixty years, the application of criminal law to control and punish people who use illicit drugs (PWUD) and those linked to illegal markets has been at the center of prohibitionist drug policies 9. These policies have resulted in an overrepresentation of PWUD among the prison population, with few impacts on reducing the affordability or use of illicit drugs or increasing their age of initiation (Cerda et al., 2021; Quinlan, 2015). Furthermore, prohibitionism has been associated with significant social and health costs, such as organized crime-related violence or outbreaks of infectious diseases among PWUD and prison populations (Csete, 2016). However, the most current United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recommendations for drug control emphasize a public health, rights-based and evidence-based approach to preventing and treating problems associated with drug use (Cerda et al., 2021).

Indeed, jurisdictions may decide to introduce strict regulations on alcohol consumption but may be permissive regarding tobacco use (i.e., Morocco). Other jurisdictions may prefer decriminalizing drug consumption but imposing highly restrictive tobacco regulations (i.e., Portugal or Canada). In this sense, it is essential to highlight how these policies have emerged and subsequently affected health outcomes associated with ADT use. More work is also needed to map how these policies interact with each other as well as what has been influencing their current shapes, to properly measure their “effects” on population's alcohol, drug, and tobacco use.

General research question: Our panel is interested in exploring, from an interdisciplinary approach, the following research question: to what extent do ADT policies’ changes over time--considering also mutual influences among policies—affect variations in substance use in the general population and vulnerable populations?

We are interested in papers that tackle two aspects individually or simultaneously regarding the explanans and the explanandum of alcohol, drug, and/or tobacco policies. So first, for the explanans, we are interested in interdisciplinary perspectives using theoretical and empirical approaches (including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods) working on the following research questions: how do policies in alcohol, drug, and/or tobacco emerge, change, or influence each other? What roles have international organizations, such as the WHO or UNODC, as well as international conventions, had in shaping these policies. Can the adoption of substance control laws in developed countries be attributed to the action of international organizations without considering domestic political forces? How do policies in different realms influence each other? How are institutional learning and knowledge transmitted among different realms of these policies? How do policymakers and researchers in these three substances field interact with each other?

Regarding how alcohol, drug, and/or tobacco policies are the explanandum when observing changes in the population and sub-populations, this panel is interested in qualitative and quasi-experimental designs that explicitly consider both their individual or mutual influence on alcohol, drug, or tobacco use. We are inviting works that focus on questions such as: Under what conditions treatment for tobacco, alcohol, and drug use disorders work more effectively? Do populations or subpopulations respond to tax increases differently depending on the substance? Can health gains in one policy be deterred by introducing a new policy in another field?