A Ritter
Biographic Data
| ID | 19590 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Ritter |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Ritter |
| SIGNATURE | RITTER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9540-1920 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 89 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 89 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1917 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Arts of noticing unloved others
A growing body of scholarly work acknowledges the importance of attending to the entanglements of human and more-than-human lives, including the importance of affect for how we come to understand other organisms. However, to date, little work has been done on the affective aspects of how more-than-human beings come to be understood in policy. Environmental humanities approaches including expert engagement with affective storytelling, attention to…
Navigating the Gap
Partnerships between researchers and consumers—specifically, people who use drugs in the context of our research co‐production—can significantly enhance the relevance and impact of research. Funders increasingly emphasise the value of community‐researcher collaborations, yet translating this commitment into effective practice remains challenging. This commentary draws from our experience in developing an application for a collaborative grant with…
Making ‘Safety’ for Children and Young People in Drug Policy
Across youth and drug policies, ‘safety’ is invoked as a self-evident good, yet its meaning and effects are rarely interrogated. Using Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? approach, we critically analyse an Australian policy document — the NSW Strategic Plan for Children and Young People 2016–2019 — and examine how ‘safety’, ‘children and young people’, and ‘drugs’ are co-constituted, with effects on how they are governed through drug p…
Framing drug policy reform
The majority of third-sector organisations advanced cohesive, rights-based, and harm-reduction-oriented frames, including strong support for legal reform. In contrast, the report framed drug policy reform primarily through service-level and harm-reduction recommendations, while more politically contentious proposals-particularly decriminalisation and prison-based harm reduction-were less visible or absent. Our findings illustrate how frame-tracki…
The malleable logics of mandate
The use of mandate by politicians reveals the conditions that get set around policy change. The use of mandate by advocates suggests that expectations of policy events are different to those of government. Appreciating how mandate is multiply used and comes to have effects opens avenues for maximising the opportunity in policy windows
Designing Better Drug Regulation
Drug policy design is often a process of comparison between options, consideration of evidence and politics, and working within values pluralism and the constraints of imagination. As a result, drug policy change is characterized by fits and starts, incremental change, and limited by perceptions of what is politically and socially possible. This paper explores policy design methods that might be employed to address the challenges of policy design…
Is start time a risk factor for amounts consumed on a given day if drinking duration is taken into account? An event-level study
Background This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on typical drinking patterns and the relationship between drinking start time and duration on daily drinks and drinking pace.Methods 573 participants from New South Wales (NSW), Australia completed five waves of weekly diaries assessing a ‘typical week’s alcohol consumption’ between March and November 2020. We examined the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on drinking start time…
Values in drug policy documents
Background Documents are influential in shaping drug policy debates and are valuable data for drug policy research. In this article we conduct a values analysis of one drug policy document. The objectives were to assess the values within a policy document; assess the utility of Schwartz’s values framework in documentary analysis; and consider the relationship between values and policy positions.Methods We chose the report foreword of a Special Co…
Hydromorphone Hopes
Unmet treatment need
Assessing the Processes and Experiences of Using and Implementing a Routine Data Collection System at Two Aboriginal Alcohol and Other Drug Residential Services Located in Rural Queensland
Geographic Differences in Public Opinion on Drug Policy
An analysis of scope, topics, methods and categories of drug policy research published in the International Journal of Drug Policy
The chosen operational definition forecloses and stabilises drug policy research as a particular field of practice, with associated topics and methods. It circumscribes it to around 34 % of publications in IJDP over 2023 and 2024. If another journal (or dataset of drug research) was chosen, it may be larger or smaller and with differing primary topics and methods as well as spread across categories of policy research. Perhaps more importantly how…
Comparing drug policies
We conclude that the GDPI project demonstrates that robust comparative evaluation of drug policy at a global scale is possible. However, we also reveal that this project will necessarily be subject to continuous refinement - especially when it comes to standardising expert country evaluations. We outline practical challenges and suggestions for future work in this direction
Why are people with lived and living experience conflicted about the legalisation of drugs? Analysing qualitative data from the UK Drug Policy Voices project using Schwartz’s theory of basic values
Debates about legalisation are complex and conflicted due to value pluralism and value conflict. Multiple values were activated when considering legalisation from the position of one's own drug use, family and friends, and the community
Bridging the evidence and the politics
Supervised Injectable Opioid Treatment (SIOT) targets people experiencing opioid dependence who have not benefited from existing treatments. In this population, SIOT has been demonstrated to be efficacious and effective, yet this modality of treatment has only been taken up in a few countries. In this commentary we describe the socio-political context and history to the recent establishment of an implementation trial of injectable hydromorphone i…
The policy author-function
Regulating the Plant Versus Regulating the Drug
The cultivation of cannabis has been shaped by underpinning social, political, and economic dynamics over thousands of years. Recently, a new wave of regulatory reform has opened up legal and decriminalized ways of growing, obtaining, and using cannabis plants and products. Yet in some locations, these reforms continue to be informed by conceptualizations of cannabis as “drug” invoking links to criminality. The dominant figuring of cannabis as “d…
Paternalism in Australian parliamentary debate
Across the globe, welfare conditionality and sanctioning increasingly permeate social welfare programs. Paternalism is one of the key normative rationales invoked when both scholars and politicians debate the legitimacy of this reform. With a view to bringing the scholarly and political debates into closer conversation with each other, this paper examines how paternalism manifests in political debate. We systematically analyse the paternalist arg…
In pursuit of safer supply
Reflections on editing the International Journal of Drug Policy
It's going to get pretty tippy”
A 'drug strategy' is a policy document that structures the priorities and directions for interventions for drug related issues within a particular jurisdiction and/or context. A 'pillars' drug strategy concentrates efforts through clustering separated columns of activity, such as law enforcement, harm reduction, treatment, and prevention. In this study, we examined drug policy stakeholders' perspectives on the structure, function, and fit of a fo…
Guiding principles for breaking down drug-related stigma in academic writing
Citizens’ juries and their role in improved alcohol policy
Background Increasing public participation has the potential to inform better alcohol policy. One method for increasing participation is the citizens’ jury – a strategy that has been both touted as a panacea for issues of democratic representation and dismissed as ineffective in impacting policy. Seeking to look past both hype and cynicism, we reflect on two Australian juries with an aim to identify both the potentials and pitfalls of the use of …
The Ocean of the Soul
Ocean of the Soul is one of the great works of the German Orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892-1971). It presents a comprehensive analysis of the writings of the mystical Persian poet Far d al-D n At t r who is thought to have died at an advanced age in April 1221 when the Mongols destroyed his home city of N sh p r in the north-east of Iran. The book, which resulted from decades of investigation of literary and historical sources, was first publishe…
The productive techniques and constitutive effects of 'evidence-based policy' and 'consumer participation' discourses in health policy processes
Criminal network vulnerabilities and adaptations
The current paper aimed to investigate the effectiveness of five law enforcement interventions in disrupting and dismantling criminal networks. We tested three law enforcement interventions that targeted social capital in criminal networks (betweenness, degree and cut-set) and two interventions that targeted human capital (actors who possess money and those who possess precursor chemicals). These five interventions are compared with each other an…
Naloxone works
For over 20 years, drug policy experts have been calling for the wider availability of naloxone, to enable lay overdose witnesses to respond to opioid overdose events. However, the 'evidence base' for peer-administered naloxone has become a key point of contention. This contention opens up critical questions about how knowledge ('evidence') is constituted and validated in drug policy processes, which voices may be heard, and how knowledge produce…
Networks within networks
Understanding criminal networks can aid in the identification of key players and important relationships within the network. We examined multiple, directed link types in a criminal network. Eight distinct link types were identified, each one related to the exchange of a particular resource (e.g. drugs, money). The analyses focused on the eight link-type network layers and a merged network representing links across all eight layers. We were able t…
Recasting Participation in Drug Policy
Calls for “evidence-based policy” and greater community “participation” are often heard in the drug policy field. Both movements are in different ways concerned with the same questions about how “drug problems” ought to be governed and the place of “expertise” and “engagement” in democratic societies. However, these calls rely on the assumption that knowledges, publics, expertise, and issues of concern are fixed and stable, waiting to be addresse…
Problems, policy and politics
Drug policy is a complex and controversial policy domain and traditional models of the policy process which present policy making as a process of authoritative problem solving by governments deny the complexity of the policy process in the real-world. An alternative perspective is to engage with the idea of policy-making as an ongoing process of managing the problematic, with multiple participants and competing perspectives. Kingdon's ‘multiple s…
Moral framings in the Australian parliamentary debate on drug testing of welfare recipients
Around the world an expanding array of behavioural conditions are being attached to social security payments. This paper offers empirical evidence of the various moral frames used in the welfare conditionality debate, by its supporters and detractors. We systematically analyse the debates in the Australian federal parliament in 2017 and 2018 on two bills attempting to introduce drug testing of working‐age welfare recipients, each of which resulte…
Illicit drugs, policing and the evidence-based policy paradigm
The mantra of evidence-based policy (EBP) suggests that endeavours to implement evidencebased policing will produce better outcomes. However there is dissonance between the rhetoric of EBP and the actuality of policing policy. This disjuncture is critically analysed using the case study of illicit drugs policing. The dissonance may be ameliorated by taking into account the policing context, and lessons from the extant evidence-based medicine, res…
Berlin-Bagdad. Neue Ziele mitteleuropaischer Politik
Stabilizing the International Copper Market
In this study, economic analysis and simulations on an econometric model of the international copper economy are employed to assess the viability and probable impacts of the two current front-running schemes for copper market stabilization, namely Pure Buffer Stock (PBS) Schemes and Hybrid Buffer Stock/Supply Management (HBS) Schemes. PBS schemes were found (i) to generate net revenue reductions for all producers and net exporting countries; (ii)…
The Ocean of the Soul
The Ocean of the Soul is one of the great works of the German Orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892-1971). It presents a comprehensive analysis of the writings of the mystical Persian poet Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār who is thought to have died at an advanced age in April 1221 when the Mongols destroyed his home city of Nīshāpūr in the north-east of Iran. The book, which resulted from decades of investigation of literary and historical sources, was first publ…
The ethics of reimbursing injecting drug users for public health research interviews
The 15th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, Melbourne, Australia, 20–24th April 2004
A review of the efficacy and effectiveness of harm reduction strategies for alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs
Harm reduction is both a policy approach and used to describe a specific set of interventions. These interventions aim to reduce the harms associated with drug use. Employing a strict definition of harm reduction, evidence for the efficacy and effectiveness of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug harm reduction interventions were reviewed. Systematic searches of the published literature were undertaken. Studies were included if they provided evaluat…
The Ethics of Paying Drug Users Who Participate in Research
The payment of research participants raises ethical and empirical questions that have special importance in addictions research involving drug-dependent participants. Despite a now large literature on human subjects payment, what is still needed is practical guidance for investigators and ethics committees. This paper reviews the literature on: Current payment practices and guidelines; defining features of undue and due incentives and fair reimbu…
Studying illicit drug markets
How do drug policy makers access research evidence
Methods for comparing drug policies—The utility of composite Drug Harm Indexes
Retail price as an outcome measure for the effectiveness of drug law enforcement
Illicit drugs policy through the lens of regulation
Patients Who Attend the Emergency Department Following Medication Overdose
The business cycle and drug use in Australia
Measuring research influence on drug policy
Drug policy coordination
Illicit drugs, policing and the evidence-based policy paradigm
The mantra of evidence-based policy (EBP) suggests that endeavours to implement evidencebased policing will produce better outcomes. However there is dissonance between the rhetoric of EBP and the actuality of policing policy. This disjuncture is critically analysed using the case study of illicit drugs policing. The dissonance may be ameliorated by taking into account the policing context, and lessons from the extant evidence-based medicine, res…
Australian threshold quantities for ‘drug trafficking’
Legal threshold quantities for drug trafficking, over which possession of an illicit drug is deemed ‘trafficking’ as opposed to ‘personal use’ are used in most Australian states and territories. Yet, in spite of known risks from adopting such thresholds, most notably of unjustified conviction of users as traffickers, the capacity of Australian legal thresholds to deliver proportional sanctioning has been subject to limited research. In this study…
Preferences for policy options for cannabis in an Australian general population
Legislating thresholds for drug trafficking
Making change happen
Examining the construction and representation of drugs as a policy problem in Australia's National Drug Strategy documents 1985–2010
Problems, policy and politics
Drug policy is a complex and controversial policy domain and traditional models of the policy process which present policy making as a process of authoritative problem solving by governments deny the complexity of the policy process in the real-world. An alternative perspective is to engage with the idea of policy-making as an ongoing process of managing the problematic, with multiple participants and competing perspectives. Kingdon's ‘multiple s…
Patterns of drug preference and use among people who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia
Background: Understanding of substitution patterns in drug using careers is limited. Between 2009 and mid-2013, the purity-adjusted price of methamphetamine declined sharply in Melbourne in absolute terms and relative to the purity-adjusted price of heroin. We determine whether there were associated increases among people who inject drugs (PWID) in (1) use of methamphetamine and (2) citing methamphetamine as the drug of choice. Method: Responses …
Deemed Supply in Australian Drug Trafficking Laws
In Australia, eight of the nine legal jurisdictions have enacted ‘deemed supply’ provisions for illicit drug trafficking offences that presume ‘intent to supply’ based on the quantity of a drug an alleged offender is found with and attach criminal liability for the offence of supply. Such laws have been enacted for more than 35 years. In this article we critically examine: the rationale for the widespread adoption of Australian deemed supply laws…
Political science (55 works) · Law (44 works) · Medicine (44 works) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (38 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Psychology (35 works) · Law (33 works) · Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes (27 works) · Public relations (26 works) · Business (25 works)