Drug Normalisation PDF

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Summary

This set of notes looks into Drug Normalisation and drug rates into the 1990. As well as emerging themes such as denormalization and and drug supply....

Description

Lecture 6 Drugs Normalisation Thesis

2/11/17

Drug Use Peak of the 1990s -

Illicit drug taking amongst young adults (16-24) rose steadily from less than 5% in the 1960s to around the 10% in the 1970s This trend continued, with illicit drug taking rising from 10% in the 1970s to 15-20% in the 1980s From the 1990s, however drug taking began to rise much more dramatically Between 1990 and 1995, drug trying doubled from nearly one quarter to nearly one half of mid-adolescents

Three Drug Stories of the 80’s/90’s Heroin Drug subcultures - Heroin smokers (drug-crime) - Heroin injectors (drug danger) Emergence of Crack Cocaine - USA Crack stories - Heroin-crack users (poly-drug users) Chemical Generation - Ecstasy and social contexts - Highly publicised drug deaths - visual collapse of gender and class differences Why was the 1990s generation of adolescents using drugs in an unprecedented way? (Blackwell, 2007; Parker et al, 1998) Explaining Drug Use Explanations were traditionally found in the sociology of deviance and/or abnormal psychology …in particular; - Merton - Cloward and Ohlin - Becker - Young …and; - Risk factors / susceptibility - Gateway Theory Drug Normalisation The North-West Longitudinal Study Five year study of a sample of over 700 (complete data on 299), 14-19 year olds from 8 schools 6 dimensions of drugs normalisation 1) Drug Availability - Year 1: 6 out of 10

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Year 5: 9 out of 10 - Cannabis Drug Trying - 1/3 in year 1 to 2/3 in year 5 - Cannabis - Aerosols (early adolescents) Drug Use - % of 15 year olds regular drug users - Cost benefit decisions / reasoned choices Drug Wise - Drug users and abstainers demonstrated knowledge of drugs - Moral accommodation of others drug use Future Intensions - Open mindedness about future drug use Cultural Accommodation of the Illicit - Drug taking is accommodated into leisure time

Why the 1990s? The demanding journey from adolescence to adulthood -

Youth Labour Market Education and training Living Arrangements Leisure

Post Modernity -

Greater feeling of uncertainty Individualisation Risk-taking as life skill

Normalisation: Critic 1. Tendency to concentrate on measure of life time use 2. Confusion between normalcy and frequency 3. Inaccurate representation of views of non-users Emerging Themes 1) Differentiated Normalisation - Critique: lack of variation – homogenous populations - Development: social networks, drug type, gender, class - Example: socially excluded youth (Macdonald and Marsh, 2002) 2) Denormalization / Renormalisation - Critique: Failed to recognise process as dynamic - Development: reversal of process and ‘markers’ of denormalization - Example: Tobacco (Ashbridge et al, 2016) 3) Normalisation of Drug Supply - Critique: Over focused on use, neglected other side of coin - Development: Concept of social supply - Example Normalisation within distribution (Coomber et al, 2016)

Summary •

Drug use amongst young people has been increasing since the 1960s, but has arguably reached a plateau

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Normalisation theory developed against the backdrop of changing patterns of drug use and a need to push criminological theory forward beyond theories of deviance

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In contrast, researchers have argued the normalisation process has been exaggerated and fails to reflect the views of non-users

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The theoretical framework has been developed and extended by researchers – differentiated, denormalization and social supply...