The substance of youth - the place of drugs in young people's lives today

By Perri 6, Ben Jupp, Helen Perry and Kristen Lasky, November 1997

1. Introduction

Myths and misunderstandings
For nearly a decade, Britain's politicians and popular press have been seriously alarmed about young people's use of illicit drugs. Political parties have vied with one another in being tough on enforcing prohibition. The Labour Government, following recent policy in the United States, is appointing a 'drugs czar' to co-ordinate efforts to combat the 'scourge' of drug use. Pundits have expressed fears that the rave scene has brought widespread use of illicit drugs into the lives of mainstream middle-class youth.[1] Much of the media describes drugs policy in the language of a military campaign.[2]

In the wake of this moral panic, a set of images of young people who use illicit drugs has crystallised.[3] Our research casts doubt on these images, and suggests that Britain will make no progress in tackling drugs effectively until they are dispelled.

The misunderstanding of young people and their use of drugs matters because many drug policies are built on it. Too often drug education and information campaigns have focussed on the risk of falling into a condition of drug dependence that, in fact, will be faced by only a few of the young people who use drugs. As a result, the credibility of the message has been undermined amongst young people. Services for drug users have been designed mainly for the small number of young people to whom any part of the 'drug-user stereotype' applies, leaving most with little or no appropraite advice and support.

Perhaps most worrying, by ignoring the diversity of youth cultures in which drugs are taken, resourced within these cultures that could be drawn upon to reduce the harm drugs can cause may have been wasted. Stereotypes of drug takers as out-of-control ravers or heroin dependents deny that young people who take drugs possess any resources of their own to cope with their drug use.

The image of young drug users
The majority of young people do not regularly take illicit drugs. According to the latest Health Education Authority Drugs Realities survey,[4] just over a quarter of those aged between 16 and 22 have taken drugs in the last three months. Of those who regulalry take illicit drugs, most only use cannabis. Very few have ever taken heroin, cocaine or a hallucinogen other than magic mushrooms. However, the number of young people at least experimenting with drugs has been rising rapidly over the last decade. Drugs Realities found that just over 60 per cent of those aged between 20 and 22 have ever taken illicit drugs. In many parts of the country drugs are widely available and are a relatively 'normal'[5] part of the range of leisure choices.[6] Throughout Britain, most young people know where they could find drugs if they wanted them, and know other young people who use them at least sometimes.[7]

Yet while most people are aware of the growing use of drugs, the popular image of drug users is changing only slowly.

Conventional images
The young consumers of illicit drugs are conventionally seen as holding the following values and attitudes:

Relationships

• Alienated from their families.
• Unable to resist peer pressure. For instance, the introductory paragraph of a recent report by Ofsted states, 'Many factors have been associated with causing drug misuse such as...a lack of self-esteem that makes young people vulnerable to peer pressures and other influences'.[8] Popular American drugs education programmes focus on equipping young people to resist peer pressure.[9]

Authority

• In rebellion against parental authority, with no respect for teachers, the police, social workers or any other kind of authority. A paper commissioned for the Home Office Drugs Prevention Initiative summarises this view in citing evidence that 'groups that are vulnerable to initiation to drugs include those who reject traditional norms, who are cynical about authority and who are willing to violate the law. This may be an apt description of a number of young people in the UK today.'[10] John Major put it more bluntly by linking drug use with a 'yob culture'.[11]

Leisure and risk

• Attracted to excitement and risk. For instance, such perceptions lay behind the recommendation of the ministerial task force report Drugs in Scotland: meeting the challenge that 'schemes should be set up with a particular focus on the development of alternative activities which seek to engage young people at a time of their lives when they are attracted by excitement and risk'.[12]
• Night-clubbers in search of excitement or oblivion, reckless about the risks to their health, education, careers and prospects. This image was recently reinforced by extensive publicity for a Release survey which found that 87 per cent of clubbers and ravers planned to take an illegal drug that night.[13]
• Apathetic, lethargic 'couch-potatoes' - the image of drug users as uninterested in exercise, satirised in the film Trainspotting.

Life expectations

• Fatalists and 'losers', seeing no future for themselves. For instsnce, the popular 'life skills' approaches to drug prevention 'assume that people take drugs to compensate for a lack of self-esteem, moral values or personal and social life skills which render them vulnerable to engagement in a range of delinquent behaviours, including drug use'.[14]

Morality

• Tolerant or admiring of behaviour that is out of control.
• Willing to steal in order to feed their habit. Recent reports that up to half of all property crime is now being committed by 'drug abusers' feed this image.[15]
• Unaware of wider moral issues, other than arguements about the legalisation of drug use.

These kinds of images are not new. They are a combination of traditional images of a feckless underclass and conventional ideas about 'junkies', combined with more recent images of alienated youth.[16]

Correcting the myths: key findings of the study
In this study, we present findings to show that these stereotypes do not describe most of the 16- to 24-year-olds who take illicit drugs recreationally, even if some elements may have some basis in the lives of a few.

There are some differences between the attitudes of young recreational users of drugs and non-users (those who had not used an illicit drug more than twice in the last year). For instance, fewer recreational users state they can accept being 'tied down' by their families than young people in general. But our in-depth interviews indicate that these differences are not major. Contrary to the stereotypes, we found that most young people who use drugs recreationally:

Relationships

• Trust and respect their families to a similar extent to other teenagers.
• Are more independent and less introverted than those who do not use drugs.
• Make their own decisions about drug use.

Authority

• Are only very slightly more rebellious than other young people, only varying significantly in their attitudes to the police.

Leisure and risk

• Lead active lives, with drug taking usually just an integrated part of other social events.
• Have a reasonably clear understanding of the risks they face.

Life expectations

• Are quiet optimistic about their futires, and capable of thinking ahead.

Morality

• Disapprove of behaviour they regard as being out of control
• Are no less moral (on the dimensions we tested) than young people in general.
• Share the typical moral and political concerns of young people

These attitudinal findings supplement a growing body of quantitative research which suggests that drug use is part of general lifestyle experimentation, characteristic of adolescence.[17] Most young people who take drugs recreationally stop of their own volition by their mid-twenties, at the latest. The peak age for use is somewhere between 16 and 20. Young people tend to stop taking drugs ('mature out') other than alcohol and, to some extent, cannabis, as they take on the responsibilities of work, children or spouses or simply moving on to other forms of satisfaction and socialising.

The role of drug taking for young people in the 1990s needs to be seen together with the roles of the dance scene, drinking, dating, partying, being a fan, being fashionable, gaining self-esteem[18] and being respected. It is part of the definition of a leisure-centred lifestyle. Most recreational drug taking takes place as part of a consumer lifestyle, not a deviant one. This study highlights the diversity of local youth sub-cultures in which this consumption occurs, or is absent.

It is only the minority of young people for whom some of the most negative stereotypes of drug users have any truth. In some of Britain's most deprived communities we can find fatalism, family breakdown and an attenuation of moral sense among young people combined with drug taking.

Just as only a small minority of the people who drink alcohol ever become alcoholics, only a small minority of recreational drug users become problem users. Moreover, those at risk of becoming problem users are not typical of young people in general or of recreational drug users, in life history or in values and attitudes. Many of those who become problem users have had disturbed childhoods, been in local authority care and been unsuccessful in education, and many have experimented with drugs earlier than other young people.[19]

These problem users are more pessimistic about their prospects, slightly less trusting of their familes and have more difficulty than other young people in forming friendships. In the most severe cases, their lives focus almost exclusively on the search for the next 'hit', and their employment prospects, unless they can control their use, are in many cases probably not much greater than their own bleak assessment.

There are some recreational users who are at risk of becoming problem users if not offered the right kind of support. But our research suggests that most young people who take drugs appear capable of managing their drug use.

Local youth cultures and drugs policy
Illegal drugs, like any other artefact of our culture, have social meanings.[20] Moreover, those meanings differ between the different cultures of Britain. There is no such thing as a 'drug culture', nor even 'drug cultures'. Rather, drugs play different roles in different youth cultures and sub-cultures.[21] Indeed, some studies conclude that the experience of drug taking is highly specific to the culture and setting in which that drug is taken, and to the personality, expectations and roles of the consumer, both for recreational and problem users.[22]

In one of the poorest and most deprived areas of the north-west we found that the decision to use drugs could more often represent something akin to a minor rebellion and, in the more chic cliques of our major cities, it may be more about innovation in style.

If the new 'drugs czar' fails to recognise local differences in youth cultures, his/her effectivenesss could be undermined. No national co-ordination agency granted plenipotentiary powers is likely to be able to make effective use of its resources unless it understands that the motivations of young people are rooted in opportunities and constraints that can only be understood at the local level. The creation of a 'drugs czar' would be a regression from the development of a locally-based policy-making and co-ordination structure set up by the previous Government (following its White Paper Tackling drugs together[23]) if it did fail to recognise this. Our research suggests that the most effective remit for the drugs czar is likely to be as a champion for drugs programmes and a disseminator of best practice information, rather than a general leading a national army into battle against the nation's youth.

It is for this reason that we have been deliberately circumspect in the policy recommendations that we make towards the end of this study. Whether one wants policies to promote abstention or harm reduction, no national blueprint is appropraite. The purpose of our study has been, rather, to assist local policy-makers and practitioners to understand the cultural contours of youth drug use and non-use, and to provide them with some instruments for using that understanding to devise local strategies. We have therefore included quotations from young people themselves.

Mapping values and attitudes does not provide a complete description of the role drugs play in young people's lives, but this kind of research does tell us something important about which policy options are capable of legitimation and which are not.[24] For instance, in many sub-cultures, great emphasis is placed on staying in control. Measures which help people to maintain control over drug taking are therefore fairly likely to be accepted by many young people.

Mapping the place of drugs in local youth cultures also highlights some of the differences between those people for whom drug use is a dominating feature of daily life and those who regard it as just another leisure activity. As such, it should help target potential problem drug users.

About the study
A key aim of this research was to provide richly detailed examples from around Britain of the values and attitudes of young people, so as to illustrate the place of illicit drugs in their lives. In our view, this is essential both to understanding what young people today think about and experience as they grow up, and in order better to design and target drugs policy.

Our research explored the attitudes of a cross-section of young people who regularly use one or more drugs on a number of key issues - relationaships, authority, risk-taking, the future, and the morality and society of drug use - and the ways in which these attitudes compare to those of young people who do not use drugs. We interviewed groups of non-users, recreational drug users and problem drug users aged between 16 and 25 in four parts of Britain - Kingston (Surrey), Wythenshawe (Manchester), parts of Yorkshire, and Brighton. Some problem users interviewed were older than 25. One hundred and ten people participated in group interviews and 101 people were interviewed individually.

The second element of the research analysed data collected for Synergy Consulting - a company which helps businesses understand the underlying values, beliefs and motivations of their customers. These 5,000 interviewees were between the ages of 15 and 75. The sample was representative of the socio-economic mix of the UK and drawn from all parts of the country, and the survey measured their degree of interest in and empathy and indentification with a range of issues and sentiments. Synergy also asked respondents whether they had ever taken any of a list of illicit drugs. Those who answered no were classed as non-users. Those who answered yes were classed as drug users. Only 8 per cent of those had taken 'hard drugs', so the vast majority of this group were not problem users. We compared the values and outlooks of the entire population (5,000), the 854 respondents aged between 15 and 24 years, and the 39 per cent of those respondents between 15 and 24 who reported that they had ever tried an illicit drug.

For the purpose of our interviews we specifically selected those who had taken an illegal drug less than twice in the last year (classed as non-users) and those who took drugs on average at least once every two weeks (classed as recreational users). Recreational users were those who did not use heroin or methadone, and in interviews did not describe themselves as having a problem, and did not describe drug use as a dominant element in their lives. Problem users selected were those who used some type of drugs agency (for example, drop-in centre, needle exchange, methadone clinic), and used heroin and/or methadone daily.