The way that power operates in the drug policy field, as in others, is through networks (Heclo, 1978; Rhodes, 1990). I have called these networks constellations because they are imbued with the preferences and powers that their members bring. The socially structured positions of these policy actors combine with their culturally structured policy preferences to produce the outcomes of policy debates. This is not just the result of a cumulation of individual choices. It emerges from the collective combinations of people, policy positions and the forms of power they bring to the field.

So if we want to understand the outcomes of policy discussions, we need to understand the forms of power that policy constellations bring together. In this field, this is not usually done through coercive power. The government does not need to threaten its drug policy opponents with force to get its policies through, as it has with some previous policy problems. UK examples include the sovereignty of the Falklands and the closure of coal mines in the 1980s, when military or police force was used to win back territory or to limit the effects of industrial action (Reiner, 1985; Hastings and Jenkins, 2010). There are occasional instances where the government has used legal power, such as the 2017 legal case over the applicability of the Psychoactive Substances Act to nitrous oxide (Nutt, 2020). In this case, the Crown Prosecution Service used the Court of Appeal to overturn the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that the Act did not apply to laughing gas. This was an example of the relatively rare application of legal power. More commonly, the institutional power of policy actors close to government is enough to ensure that policy continues to meet their preferences without the need for military, paramilitary or legal action.

While such political power may be dominant in maintaining the overall shape of UK drug policy (for example, the ongoing existence of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as the main legal framework), the precise shape of these policy decisions is affected by forms of social power.