The call for abstracts for ISSDP 2027 has now been released and is open until 22.12.2026
The 20th annual International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP) conference will be hosted by Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, from 22 to 26 June 2027. This will be the second ISSDP conference held in Latin America, after Bogotá in 2013. Under the banner Drug Policy at the Crossroads: Rebuilding Communities through Health and Justice, the conference will bring together drug policy scholars, policymakers, practitioners, advocates, and community voices to explore drug policy, its formulation, effects, and evaluation.
Latin America has lived with the consequences of drug policy for decades, and its communities have often been excluded from the debates that shape those policies. Today, drug policy stands at a crossroads as governments across the region and the world grapple with persistent challenges in public health, security, crime, development, and social inclusion. The 2027 conference places the region’s perspective at the centre: how communities affected by drug markets, drug use, violence, incarceration, and displacement can be heard, supported, and involved in shaping responses, and what the evidence tells us about building more effective, just, and humane drug policies in Latin America and beyond.
The conference welcomes submissions from the Global South and the Global North, as well as from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. With the ISSDP’s focus on connecting and facilitating world-leading drug policy research, it will also showcase novel methodological approaches and a broad range of scholarship on drug markets, including use, supply, cultivation, production, and trafficking.
Conference themes
General themes
- Drug markets, production, and supply chains. Structure and dynamics of legal and illegal drug markets: production, distribution, prices, purity, online markets, and supply-side interventions.
- Harm reduction: evidence and policy implementation. Design, scale-up, and evaluation of harm reduction services and policies, including drug checking, supervised consumption, naloxone, and safer supply.
- Alternatives to prohibition: decriminalisation, regulation, and legalisation. Reform models and their outcomes: cannabis and other drug regulation, decriminalisation of use and possession, and the political processes behind reform.
- Drug policy, public health, and criminal justice. Policy at the intersection of health and justice systems: policing, courts, incarceration, diversion, and the health consequences of enforcement.
- Lived experience: people who use drugs, growers, and those affected by the war on drugs. Treatment and recovery; the participation of people who use drugs, their families, small-scale growers, and victims of drug-related violence and enforcement in policy design, research, and evaluation.
- Communities and territories affected by drug markets and enforcement. Places shaped by drug production, trafficking, and policy responses: neighbourhoods, rural and Indigenous territories, border regions; displacement, local governance, and community-led rebuilding.
- Methodological innovations in drug policy research. New data sources, measurement, causal inference, and mixed-method designs for studying drug policy and its effects.
- Geopolitics and drug policy. International drug control, treaties and multilateral institutions, foreign policy, and the transnational politics of enforcement and reform.
Regional themes
- Drug trafficking, illegal economies, and market structures in Latin America. Organisation of trafficking networks, cocaine and synthetic drug supply chains, money laundering, and the links between drug markets and other illegal economies in the region.
- Criminal violence, criminal organisations, and drug policy: mechanisms, scale, and consequences. How drug markets and enforcement shape violence: competition between criminal organisations, state responses, homicide and disappearance patterns, and the effects of militarised and alternative security strategies.
- Decolonising drug policy: Global South perspectives and the social costs of prohibitionism. Historical and contemporary critiques of the international drug control regime from the Global South; the distribution of prohibition’s costs across countries, regions, and populations; and policy frameworks developed outside the Global North.
- Illicit crop cultivation, substitution programmes, and rural development. Coca, poppy, and cannabis cultivation; eradication, crop substitution, and rural development programmes; land, livelihoods, and the role of growers in policy design.
- Drug policy in Latin America: past, present and future. Local, national and regional drug policy frameworks; governance processes; policy analyses and evaluation; alternative development; treatment and recovery; harm reduction; prevention; human rights; and the social, political and institutional dynamics shaping drug policy across Latin America.
Authors working on Latin America may submit under either a general or a regional theme, according to the primary focus of their contribution.
A conference in two languages
To make the conference accessible across Latin America, proposals are accepted in both Spanish and English. If the number of Spanish-language submissions allows it, the programme will include sessions held entirely in Spanish. Simultaneous interpretation (Spanish–English) will be available in the keynote sessions. We expect around 350 participants across oral presentations, poster sessions, panels and workshops.
Convenors
Laura H. Atuesta – Professor, School of Finance, Economics and Government, Universidad EAFIT
Santiago Tobón – Director, Valor Público Policy Research Center, Universidad EAFIT
Gustavo Duncan – Professor, School of Finance, Economics and Government, Universidad EAFIT
Eleonora Dávalos – Professor, School of Finance, Economics and Government, Universidad EAFIT
Juan Carlos Muñoz – Professor, School of Finance, Economics and Government, Universidad EAFIT
Andrés Preciado – Coordinator, Security and Justice Research Initiative, Valor Público Policy Research Center, Universidad EAFIT
How to submit
Abstracts can be submitted through the online application programme Pretalx (https://pretalx.com/issdp2027). Submission deadline: 22 December 2026.
Submission formats:
Oral presentation. A 15-minute presentation of completed research with results, followed by discussion. Oral presentations are grouped into sessions of five papers on a shared theme, each with a discussant.
Poster. A visual presentation of research (either completed or work in progress). Posters may present research proposals with a theoretical framework and final or preliminary results, or policy proposals. Posters will be displayed for a full conference day. For ISSDP 2027, there will also be a dedicated poster session offering an interactive platform for authors to explain their poster to delegates.
Panel. A session of five papers submitted together by a group of researchers, organised around a common question so that the papers speak to one another. Panel organisers submit a single proposal that describes the session’s rationale, lists all five contributors and their papers, and names a discussant. Panels occupy one 100-minute session.
In-conference workshop. A session that either explores a specific issue in drug policy research or practice, or builds capacity through training in a specific method, tool, or practice. Workshop organisers submit a single proposal that describes the
objectives, format, intended audience, and contributors, and states which of the two purposes the workshop serves. Workshops occupy one 100-minute session.
Abstracts for oral presentations and posters are submitted individually. Proposals for panels and workshops are submitted once by the organiser and must include the names and affiliations of all contributors.
Each participant may present only one paper (oral presentation or poster) but may appear as a co-author on other submissions.
Abstracts need not follow a structured format, but each must describe the background, objectives, methods, results, and implications of the study, in no more than 300 words. Proposals for panels and workshops must not exceed 800 words, including a summary of no more than 100 words for each contribution.
All submissions will be reviewed by a Scientific Committee across three criteria on a scale of 1 to 5: (i) Drug policy relevance; (ii) Originality; and (iii) Quality. The Scientific Committee may offer a poster presentation to authors whose abstracts are not accepted for oral presentation.
The conference is multidisciplinary and supports qualitative and quantitative papers. ISSDP supports the submission of written papers in advance of the conference, and discussants are used in each session to encourage debate and foster high-quality journal submissions. For more information on the ISSDP conference style, see https://www.issdp.org/a-guide-to-our-conferences/.
Registration and preferential rates
Participants coming from a developing economy (according to the UNCTAD classification, which includes all of Latin America and the Caribbean) or the Global South, ISSDP members, and students will be eligible for preferential registration rates. Fees and registration details will be announced on the ISSDP conference website, to be launched in the coming weeks.
Scholarships
For the 2027 conference in Medellín, the ISSDP will sponsor at least three scholarships for presenters. Each scholarship will include a free registration, up to £1,500 (international flight), and up to £1,000 (domestic flight) to cover travel and lodging, depending on the recipient’s point of departure. The scholarship categories are:
Early career researcher (PhD candidates, or researchers within five years of completing their most recent degree)
People from the Global South or developing countries (as per the UNCTAD classification), regardless of their current country of residence or institutional affiliation
Researcher with lived and/or living experience, including people who use drugs, family members, people who cultivate illicit crops, and victims of drug-related violence and enforcement
Applicants must indicate which scholarship category they are applying for when submitting their abstract and upload a short paragraph explaining why they should be selected (maximum 250 words). The review committee will consider this statement alongside the quality of the abstract.
About ISSDP
ISSDP, formally established in 2009 (with its first conference held in 2007), is a society of scholars committed to advancing drug policy research. The ISSDP’s objectives are to: be a forum for high quality drug policy analysis; develop relations among drug policy analysts and thus strengthen the field; develop the scientific base for policy decisions; and improve the interface between researchers and policymakers.
More information
Further details about the conference, including keynote speakers, accommodation, social activities and side-events, will be released in the coming months on the ISSDP conference website. Questions can be sent to issdp2027@eafit.edu.co.
