This thesis is based on an Australian Research Council funded research grant. Fifty-one qualitative interviews were conducted with human service workers to gain an understanding of their interpretations of their clients’ ‘drug problems’ and of their own role, the service system and wider policies. Although harm minimisation has been Australia’s official drug policy since 1985, little is known about how harm minimisation is ‘enacted’ in the helping culture. To date human service workers have not been recognised in their constitutive role in harm minimisation discourse. Whilst a significant part of drug policy interventions are delivered via human services, the helping subject has not come under scrutiny. The drug using subject remains ill-conceived as a result of neglecting its partnering others or indeed its overlapping with other subject positions. Moving beyond recognising workers only in terms of staff opinions and attitudes, a relational and multi-level approach is adopted to introduce more complexity into the debate. After a brief historic discussion of the creation of the ‘human service worker’ and the ‘drug user’ (as client) and methodological considerations about discourse analysis, the thesis proceeds with the introduction of a conceptual framework consisting of four levels: the individual, relational, institutional and cultural political economic level. These levels are used to examine the existing literature on ‘drug problem factories’ and for the analysis of the data. By focusing on these levels the critical analysis of the interview material shows that ‘harm’ and ‘minimising’ are themselves contested categories and that different harms and different harm producing and minimising practices can be identified some of which have come into discourse, others are excluded or entirely absent. The human service workers struggle to make sense of their own role and to define how drug users are being ‘helped’ and could or should be helped. Their understanding of harm minimisation discourse aligns with, supports and/or resists other discourses such as (neo)liberalism, neoconservatism, prohibition and economic rationalism. The workers are portrayed as having substituted increasing complexity for initial simplicity in the course of working with ‘drug users’. In summary, this thesis offers a poststructuralist analysis of how harm minimisation is constituted, negotiated and undermined from the perspective of human service workers and shows how the service systems’ helping cultures enrol human service workers in harm producing and harm minimising practices. Harm minimisation consists of discursive and non-discursive elements and is a product of deliberate social forces as well as messy contingencies and unintended consequences.

The thesis presents a case study of New Zealand's Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act 1966 - a civil commitment law used to detain alcoholics and drug addicts for up to two years in state-certified residential treatment facilities. The thesis positions itself as a call for legislative reform. The central argument is that the Act is an anachronistic and potentially draconian piece of social legislation which has no place on the modern-day New Zealand statute book. In the first part of the thesis, Chapter 1 introduces the research, outlines the structure and methodology of the thesis, and locates the study within a wider tradition of scholarship on the management of people with alcohol problems. Chapter 2 summarises the analytical framework that is used to evaluate the Act, attaching particular importance to both the philosophical traditions and the practical strategies of harm minimisation and therapeutic jurisprudence. Chapter 3 gives a positivist reading of the legislation : outlining the evolution of the Act, essaying its major provisions, and noting the efforts that have been made to refine or reform the statute since it was passed in the mid-1960s. Chapter 4 draws on the limited amount of data available to describe how the Act is currently operating 'on the ground'. In the second part of the thesis, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act is put into a comparative context by describing examples of similar-type statutes that exist in two other jurisdictions. Chapter 5 focuses on the New South Wales Inebriates Act 1912; Chapter 6 focuses on the Swedish Act on Care of Addicts in Certain Cases 1989. The final part of the thesis builds a case for reform of the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act. Chapter 7 identifies various practical and clinical problems with the Act, which mean that the statute does not work in instrumental terms. It is submitted that the Act cannot be said to make better provision for the care and treatment of alcoholics. Chapter 8 highlights several legal and philosophical difficulties with the Act, which mean that the legislation does not work in value terms. It is submitted that the Act is offensive to the right to refuse treatment and fundamentally conflicts with the principles of individual autonomy and informed consent. Chapter 9 proposes three options for reforming the Act, expressing a preference for the outright repeal of the statute. Finally, Chapter 10 draws conclusions from the preceding discussion, and speculates on the likelihood that the recommended reforms will be implemented.

With the exception of horse racing, any form of gambling was criminalised in South Africa until the dawn of constitutional democracy in 1994. In the same year, the Lotteries and Gambling Board Act, 1993, came into force decriminalising, amongst others, casinos and gambling games within the Republic. This Act has since been repealed and gambling is governed by the National Gambling Act, 2004, as well as by provincial gambling laws. Interactive / online gambling is illegal pending authorisation by a national legislation. Such legislation, the National Gambling Amendment Act, 2008, seeking to regulate interactive gambling awaits proclamation of the date of its commencement by the President. The National Gambling Policy, 2016, dashes any hope of regulation of interactive gambling, however, as it seeks to embargo the introduction of (new) forms of gambling, including but not limited to interactive gambling. The scourge of problem gambling and the protection of traditional forms of gambling, that is, casinos, are the main reasons for advocating for the continued prohibition of interactive gambling. Problem gambling is not unique to interactive gambling, but affects all modes of gambling. South Africa is among countries with a high rate of problem gambling. It is feared that interactive gambling will exacerbate the scourge of problem gambling as gamblers with access to the internet will now have unlimited gambling opportunities around the clock. On the other hand, interactive gambling offers practical solutions to the implementation of harm minimisation strategies to deal with problem gambling such as limitations on gambling deposits, losses and time. Prohibition of interactive gambling is difficult to enforce and deprives the country of an opportunity to control, through licensing, this mode of gambling and possible benefit from taxation and licensing fees. It further exposes gamblers – who despite prohibition choose this mode of gambling – to unregulated and illegal gambling websites. This thesis attempts to provide safeguards for regulation of interactive gambling and to embrace the benefits of the technological development that makes interactive gambling a reality. The United Kingdom (UK) is a prime example of a country that has successfully legalised and licensed interactive gambling in its jurisdiction. / Criminal and Procedural Law / LL. D.