'The developments of drug use patterns, drug problems and drug policy are only loosely coupled in the history of this social problem, they don't follow the same logic and are influenced by different conditions. The contributions of this issue are illustrating this assumption in a comparative perspective of the developments in European countries from the beginning of modern drug problems in 19th century. One basic question concerns the logics of different forms of constructing the drug problem and its related form of intervention and control. The dominant form of construction still are drugs as crime and the control by criminal law, which for long time has been paralleled by the construction of drugs as illness or addiction favouring intervention by psychiatric or medical treatment. Since the 1980th a new construction of drug problems gained political and practical relevance with the development of harm reduction policies. Each of these three forms of interventions follows its own logic and underlies different condition in producing policy results, which are illustrated by the case studies from Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.' (author's abstract)