Process analysis of substance addiction policies in the years of 2012-2017 period

Since the ancient times, perspectives of people and societies on substance use have changed and transformed. The substance use in medicine in the past in our country, considering it as a curative instrument, has been accepted also as a crime in time. Day after day it was understood that it would not be right to consider the situation from a single point of view and it has become widespread that the addicts were sick people who needed treatment. This point of view has been adapted in the State policies according to the necessity of being a social State and by this way the fight against the substance abuse has been found a place in the field of social policy. In this study, first of all, it is discussed the changing process of substance abuse from past to present, and the relationship between the substance abuse and the social policy. Then, the public policy process has been applied to the combat policies about the substance abuse between the years of 2012-2017, and Turkey's combat policies about substance abuse were investigated by the method of the process analysis (coming up on the agenda, formulating, legislation, implementation, and evaluation). At the end of the investigation, it has seen that Turkey's combat policies about the substance abuse, from coming up on the agenda to the evaluation stages, systematically functioned and were largely proper within the process. On the other hand, there are no studies in our country that can obtain systematic and sufficient data on the substance abuse and in many dimensions of the process, the perspective of the governments plays a role in policy making.