Gender and drug policies in Spain: advances and limitations

Until the 21st century, not much attention has been paid to the need to incorporate the gender
approach into drug policies in Spain. A decade later, the current National Strategy on Addictions
2017-24 continues to point out this issue as one of the major challenges to be achieved. The aim
of this article is to analyze how this process has been developed. To this end, a content analysis of
the main documents of this public policies has been carried out, in particular, we have examined
the three existing national drugs strategies, as well as the four action plans that develop them and
the evaluation reports of the strategies. The results of this study show a clear improvement in
the incorporation of gender issues in these policies. However, despite the progress some aspects
that can be improved are also identified. On the one hand, progress would be made if these
public policies consider the gender perspective in the areas of drug abuse prevention and harm
reduction. On the other hand, the use of strategies which are frequent in public equality policies,
such as empowerment and intersectionality, is rare in drug policies, although their application
could substantially increase its effectiveness.