| The substance of youth - the place of drugs in young people's lives today |
1. Redhead 1993 and Saunders 1995.Back
2. For example, Newsnight feature, 21 August 1997.Back
3. For a review of media images of drug users, see Parker, Measham and Aldridge 1995; Newcombe 1995; and Kohn 1987; for a review of media images of cocaine uses, see Bean 1993.Back
4. Health Education Authority, 1996.Back
There is an extensive debate and literature about the idea of the 'normalisation' of
drugs among young people in Britain. The term is variously used to mean that:
a. the behaviour of drug use has become very prevalent or widespread across an
area, across classes, the country, etc. from a starting point some years or decades ago
when it was less common among young people (see, for example, Measham, Newcombe and Parker
1994);
b. the attitudes of young people in general and of non-users have changed to the
point that drug use is accepted, regarded as legitimate, reasonable, even fashionable or
admirable;
c. the attitudes and values of young non-users in general, and not only about drug
use, have changed to become more similar over time to those of young recreational users;
In each of these senses, normalisation is a claim about trends over time, which our cross-sectional research cannot directly test. However, we have compared attitudes of non-users and recreational users towards some aspects of the morality of drug use (See Chapter 8), and we have undertaken comparisons between the two groups. In general, we cab say that (b) is partly true, but may be an over-statement but that, taking our findings as a whole, (c) is borne out to the extent that the attitudes of recreational and non-users are more similar to each either than either are to problem users.Back to Chapter 1 Back to note 69
6. See Parker, Measham and Aldridge 1995 on the north-west, and Hollands 1995; also Pearson and Gilman 1994.Back
7. A range of recent studies on the prevalence of illicit drug use has produced a reasonable consensus on the scale of consumption: Ramsay and Percy 1996; Mott and Mirrlees-Black 1995; Parker, Measham and Aldridge 1995; Balding 1994, 1996; Sutton and Maynard 1992; MORI and Health Education Authority 1992a, b.Back
9. Coggans and Watson 1995Back
10. Klee and Reid 1995: 4.Back
11. John Major advocated the objective of changing 'yob culture' in his announcement of a new strategy for tackling drugs among school children, autumn 1994, in an address to the Social Market Foundation (cited in Parker, Measham and Aldridge 1995).Back
12. Scottish Office 1994: viii.Back
14. Coggans and Watson 1995.Back
15. Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, stated that 'at least half of all property crime is now being committed by drug abusers' Sunday Times, 'Heroin used by 1 in 5 arrested', 18.5.97.Back
16. For a general discussion of contradictory themes in popular images of young people, see Davis 1990 and Hendry, Shucksmith, Love and Glendinning 1993: ch 1.Back
18. Hendry, Shucksmith, Love and Glendinning 1993.Back
19. Kandel, Yamaguchi and Chen 1992.Back
20. In sociological terms, it is not true that drug taking, even in the most deprived areas, is a symptom of 'anomie', or normlessness (in the sense of the term defined by Merton 1938).Back
21. There is an extensive debate among academic sociologists about whether or not the rave scene in Britain meets the criteria set down by the Birmingham school writers of the 1970s such as Hall and Hebdige for the definition of sub-culture: see for example Thornton 1995, and Merchant and MacDonald 1994. We do not take a position on this, but merely use the term 'sub-culture' in a common sense way to refer to the variety of local, musical, or club centred practices that do not form a discrete or comprehensive culture, but certainly have developed distinctive etiquette, deportment and demeanor, argot, dress sense, other aspects of material culture as well as distinctive styles of aspiration.Back
22. Gossop 1993; Room 1985; Falk 1983. Some modern psychologists use attribution theory to argue that the concept of addiction as a pharmacologically induced condition that shapes the user's attitudes, volition and behaviour is a convenient excuse for problem drug users not to take responsibility for their use, as well as being convenient for professionals offering certain types of services: see Davies 1992.Back
23. Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons 1995.Back
24. For other studies testing cultural hypotheses using attitudinal proxy variables, see for example Boyle and Couglin 1994, and Olli 1997.Back
25. Thirty-one of 34 recreational users and 23 of 30 non-users replied that they trust their family "a great deal".Back
27. Directorate General V 1993.Back
28. Hawkins, Catalano and Miller 1992; Dryfoos 1991.Back
29. Balding 1996 and Ramsay and Percy 1996 both offer data suggesting that users have higher than average self-esteem and may be more outgoing.Back
31. Thirteen of 37 problem users compared to 4 of 30 non-users - this finding is significant at the 95 per cent level.Back
33. Redhead 1993 and Saunders 1995.Back
34. Correlation = -0.28. Correlation coefficients are always between -1 and 1 inclusive. A correlation coefficient of -1 occurs when there is a perfect negative linear correlation. A correlation of 0 occurs when there is no linear correlation. A correlation coefficient of 1 occurs when there is a perfect positive linear correlation. The closer the correlation is to -1 or 1, the greater the linear relationship is between the two variables. Significant relationships between variables are indicated by correlation coefficients of greater than approximately + or - 0.2 if the entire data set of 100 responses are used, + or - 0.25 if just two groups are used for the calculations, say recreational users and non-users, and + or - 0.33 if just one group of respondents are used. These significant calculations use a 95 per cent confidence level. The variation in the value of significant coefficients is due to variations in sample sizes.Back
36. Trust a lot or a bit. Yeachers: 20 of 30 non-users, 22 of 34 recreational users, 16 of 28 problem users. Doctors: 25 of 29 non-users, 21 of 34 recreational users, 24 of 38 problem users. Voluntary workers: 18 of29 non-users, 13 of 28 recreational users, 15 of 25 problem users.Back
37. Henley Centre for Forecasting 1996 indicates that trust in institutions is declining, but trust in individuals with whom people have contact remains high.Back
38. Plant and Plant 1992 argue that risk-taking is a central constituent element in adolescent identity formation. It seems plausible therefore to imagine that those who take drugs might be taking greater risks in general than those who do not, and might be doing so because of some fundamental difference in attitudes to risk.Back
40. Bunton, Murphey and Bennett 1991.Back
41. Many writers associated with the so-called 'social model' of drug use have written of drug use in general as associated with hopelessness, deprivation, the expectation and experience of unemployment and marginal employment (Currie 1993). In fact, of course, many young drug users hold down jobs quite successfully (Winick 1993).Back
47. Seventeen of 30 non-users, 21 of 34 recreational users and 19 0f 36 problem users.Back
48. Correlation = -0.38. This is consistent with the finding from the US that those with higher levels of education are also more likely to cease drug use, and that truancy and school drop-outs are highly correlated with involvement with drugs (Kandel 1993). Moreover, dropping out from school early may reduce exposure to drugs education.Back
49. Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons 1995.Back
52. Power 1989; Plant and Plant 1992.Back
53. Henley Centre for Forecasting 1996, and 6, Jupp and Bentley 1996.Back
54. 22.000 parents attended the Cambridgeshire parent awareness evenings at 120 schools (Joyce 1996).Back
57. McGurk and Hurry 1995.Back
58. Coggans and Watson 1995.Back
59. Bunton, Murphey and Bennett 1991.Back
60. Dowds and Redfern 1994; Glassner and Laughlin 1987; Meikle and Watts 1994; Merchant and MacDonald 1994.Back
61. Our findings, therefore, provide powerful support to the arguements for such strategies made by Robert Power and his colleagues at the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour; see, for example, Power et al. 1995; see also Watson and Coggans 1995.Back
62. Hirst and McCamley-Finney 1994.Back
63. Davis and Coggans 1994.Back
64. For example, the widely publicised efforts of Mark Gilman and colleagues at Lifeline in Manchester who use cartoons, work through clubs and street networks, and adopt the style and culture of the rave scene through their cartoons and their Safer Dancing initiative (Lifeline 1991).Back
66. In general, on the importance of weak ties to people unlike oneself for adults at risk, see 6 1997.Back
67. The effects of such concentrations of poverty are now widely debated, following the work of William Julius Wilson in the US; see, for example, Wilson 1996.Back
69. For a discussion of this question relating to claims about 'normalisation', see note 5 above.Back
70. McGurk and Hurry 1995.Back
71. Silbereisen, Robins and Rutter 1995: 524.Back
72. The groups were recruited to give a spread of ages and a 50:50 gender mix. MORI market research has considerable experience of recruiting groups of young people for research into drugs. They have a number of checks to ensure that the participants recruited meet the quota of participants required for the research.Back
73. Appendix 2 describes the Synergy analysis in greater detail.Back
74. This figure is slightly less than the 45 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds who report ever having taken any illicit drug in the 1994 British Crime Survey. However, the list of illicit drugs in the British Crime Survey was more extensive than that used by Synergy. Responses to individual drugs, such as ever trying cannabis were the same (36 per cent in both surveys).Back
75. Turning Point 1995 says that 'the standard assumption of male to female drug use [is] 4:1..Back