Happy New Year Members, Participants and Friends,
While we all looked forward to seeing 2020 in the rear-view mirror, it seems that 2021 is starting off with its own share of unexpected challenges. We hope this email finds you all managing the ongoing global situations as well as possible. We are optimistic that it won’t be too much longer before we are able to meet again in person. In the meantime, there are a few items we wanted to share with you, as the ISSDP board has remained quite busy planning some virtual opportunities for members.
1. News about ISSDP Conference in Aquascalientes, Mexico
As the vaccination distribution has not gone quite as planned and many countries remain in severe lock downs through at least the summer, we have decided to push back the ISSDP Mexico conference to November 17-19, 2021. It is our sincere hope that by waiting until the Fall many of us will be able to meet in person, although we recognize that several of our colleagues may remain unable to travel. Some revisions to the program may be necessary in light of the inability of some speakers to attend. We will be checking in with members and planned speakers in the spring to try to manage these changes, most likely through a message board inside Memberclicks (the most expeditious way to connect to everyone). In the meantime, IJDP has agreed to publish a special section on Drug Policy in Latin America drawing on papers/themes of our original 2020 conference. We will be working with the Mexican host committee in efforts to reach out to authors of accepted abstracts related to key themes from the conference for consideration in the special issue in the next two months. Other updates about the conference will be provided on our external webpage for those who are not members https://www.conference.issdp.org/.
2. New ISSDP Webinar Series, Asian Criminology Society pre-conference event, and ICARA webinar series.
We are developing a webinar series for 2021 to provide opportunities for our members to stay on top of the latest drug policy research as well as some mentoring opportunities. These events will take place at different times of the day to facilitate involvement of members from various regions of the world. As not all webinars will be assessable to everyone live, we will record them and post them to a membership only part of the web – or in Memberclicks. The full schedule is still being developed, and we welcome your ideas (particularly if you want to host the event), but we do have some upcoming items in February and March we are excited to share with you:
| Month | Topic |
| Feb 3, 2021 | “Tales from the Field: An Invitation to Criminological Research in Asia” https://www.ryukoku.ac.jp/nc/event/entry-7193.html |
| March 31, 2021 | Research Webinar: Laura Atuesta, Title: TBD (about drug kidnapping in Mexico) 5 pm GMT, 10 am CST. |
3. European Society of Criminology online conference collaboration
The ISSDP is continuing its long-term engagement with the European Society of Criminology (ESC), and will once again be planning panels for their conference in September 2021. If you have an idea for a paper/ panel at the conference, please connect with Rebecca Askew, Alex Stevens and Caitlin Hughes.
4. New Open Access Journal entitled Drug Policy
We are very pleased to announce that ISSDP member Eric Sevigny (Georgia State University) has become the first Editor-in-Chief of a brand-new open access journal entitled Drug Policy. ISSDP is working to establish a formal agreement with the new journal, so that it can become the second official affiliated journal of ISSDP (the first such journal is the International Journal of Drug Policy (IJDP)). We will keep you updated on how this engagement develops, but in the mean time we hope you will consider submissions to this brand new journal as you develop your work.
5. Glitches in Transfer of Accounts and Administration
We want to apologize for not sending acknowledgements to many of you who may have recently become a member and/or renewed your membership fees. We have encountered some bumps in the transition of financial account authority and administrative support as we transition ISSDP secretary and financial officer, which we hope will be finally rectified in the coming month. In the meantime, please know we are very excited to have you join (or recommit) to our organization. Your membership will provide you free access to the research/mentoring webinar series being developed for the coming year.
Warmest regards,
Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, President ISSDP
Caitlin Hughes, Vice-President ISSDP
John Collins, Secretary and Finance, ISSDP
