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
Notes
1. Redhead 1993 and Saunders 1995.2. For example, Newsnight feature, 21 August 1997.
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
Health Education Authority, 1996.
5. In several senses. First, drug use is not normless, because there are norms of drug use, in that there are rituals of, for example, cannabis smoking and using ecstasy at raves (Glassner and Loughlin 1987). Second, it is not the case that drugs are 'abnormal', in the sense that they are universally associated with social marginilisation.
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.
6. See Parker, Measham and Aldridge 1995 on the north-west, and Hollands
1995; also Pearson and Gilman 1994.
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.
8. Ofsted 1997
9. Coggans and Watson 1995
10. Klee and Reid 1995: 4.
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).
12. Scottish Office 1994: viii.
13. Release 1997.
14. Coggans and Watson 1995.
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.
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.
17. Kandel 1993.
18. Hendry, Shucksmith, Love and Glendinning 1993.
19. Kandel, Yamaguchi and Chen 1992.
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).
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.
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.
23. Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
1995.
24. For other studies testing cultural hypotheses using attitudinal proxy
variables, see for example Boyle and Couglin 1994, and Olli 1997.
25. Thirty-one of 34 recreational users and 23 of 30 non-users replied that
they trust their family "a great deal".
26. Jowell et al. 1996.
27. Directorate General V 1993.
28. Hawkins, Catalano and Miller 1992; Dryfoos 1991.
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.
30. Twenty-six of 37.Back
31. Thirteen of 37 problem users compared to 4 of 30 non-users - this finding
is significant at the 95 per cent level.
33. Redhead 1993 and Saunders 1995.
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.
5. Correlation = -0.25.
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.
37. Henley Centre for Forecasting 1996 indicates that trust in institutions is
declining, but trust in individuals with whom people have contact remains
high.
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.
39. Balding 1996.
40. Bunton, Murphey and Bennett 1991.
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).
42. Correlation = -0.33.
43. Correlation = 0.32.
44. Correlation = -0.31. Back
45. Correlation = -0.42.Back
46. Correlation = 0.34.
47. Seventeen of 30 non-users, 21 of 34 recreational users and 19 0f 36
problem users.
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.
49. Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
1995.
50. Jowell et al. 1996.
51. Courtwright 1995.
52. Power 1989; Plant and Plant 1992.
53. Henley Centre for Forecasting 1996, and 6, Jupp and Bentley
1996.
54. 22.000 parents attended the Cambridgeshire parent awareness evenings at
120 schools (Joyce 1996). Back
55. Ofsted 1997.
56. Balding 1996.
7. McGurk and Hurry 1995.Back
58. Coggans and Watson 1995.
59. Bunton, Murphey and Bennett 1991.
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).
65. Thornton 1995.
6. In general, on the importance of weak ties to people unlike oneself for
adults at risk, see 6 1997.
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
68. Currie 1993.
69. For a discussion of this question relating to claims about 'normalisation',
see note 5 above.
70. McGurk and Hurry 1995.Back
71. Silbereisen, Robins and Rutter 1995: 524.
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.
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).
75. Turning Point 1995 says that 'the standard assumption of male to female drug use [is] 4:1.