Drug use and social exclusion: the implications for policy

1. Drug use and social exclusion: the implications for policy Dr Aileen O’Gorman School of Applied Social Sciences University College Dublin aileen.ogorman@ucd,ie Scottish Drugs Forum Drug problems and poverty – the poor relations? 22 June 2006

2. Key issue Drug use is a widespread social phenomenon. Yet, ‘problem drug use’ is concentrated in socially and spatially excluded neighbourhoods.

3. Key questions • What is a drug problem? • Why ‘social exclusion’? • How are socially excluded neighbourhoods created? • What is the ‘lived experience’ of a socially excluded neighbourhood? • What is the relationship between living in a socially excluded environment and developing a drug problem?

4. Risk environments for problem drug use (1) • Educational disadvantage • Primary level (34% - 51%) • Early school leaver (36% - 72%) • 3rd level education ( 2% - 20%) • Unemployment • ‘joblessness’ (54% - 76%) • long-term (51% - 73%) • Imbalanced social class composition • Professionals (0.4% - 4%) • ‘Unclassified’ (13% - 45%)

5. Risk environments for problem drug use (2) • High population density • Total population (5,500 – 32,000) • 15-29 age group (25% - 40%) • Population instability (-11% - + 22%) Cumulative & interconnected variables Dynamic of social exclusion in a risk environment

6. The ‘meaning’ of drug (heroin) use • Part palliative, part ‘buzz’ • Gives structure and routine to their day • Gives status, identity, respect you've nothing to do, you're bored silly, you haven't even got your pride, you don't know who you are when you've no work. At least if you're an addict it's something, ‘I'm a junkie’ do you know what I mean. You don't have worries when you're on it you know, you're just - you're happy. You don't know whether you're happy ‘cos you're sitting there watching Coronation Street or ‘cos you're stoned out of your head. And that's, that's the truth you know It just takes the worry away.

7. RISK ENVIRONMENTO’Gorman (2005) Drug Careers Policy & Political Context

8. Interpreting the evidence Could have been interpreted as a culture of poverty, an underclass …. Instead found: • the ‘means’ may be different (constrained by lack of ‘legitimate’ opportunities) the desired ‘ends’ similar • Lethal combination of social exclusion and cultural inclusion - a surfeit of American values [of consumption] (cf. J. Young) • Compensating for exclusion by (over) identifying with the trappings of mainstream culture (cf. C. Nightingale)

9. Policy Implications?

10. The Policy Cycle Alcock et al. (2004:3) Identification of social need • Policy Proposals Evaluation of policy & effects Implementation

11. Analysing the policy discourse • Dominance of neo-liberal, ‘new right’, ideology – the culture of poverty thesis; welfare dependency; different values from mainstream - the underclass analysis • Stress on personal failings, family dysfunctions etc. (rather than a failing of the economic and political system) • Communities of poor people treated as social problems (rather than a product of inequalities) • Focus on crime and anti-social behaviour; drugs presented as the threat (rather than being symptomatic of other issues)

12. Implications for policy • Focus of drugs policy shifts from public health and harm reduction policies to law enforcement & supply control • Criminalisation of social policy - social control rather than social care becomes the dominant policy concern • Drug users subjected to control and surveillance through the drug treatment system, the criminal justice system, and the welfare system • Moralisation of drugs and social policy – only those willing to be reformed and rehabilitated will be included and assisted. Others will be punished (benefits cut; ASBOs; prison; homeless).

13. Policy Response based on evidence • Solutions to drug problems cannot be found in drug policies alone • The failure to take broader social, cultural, political and economic context into account in explaining why people living in poor and excluded neighbourhoods develop drug problems means that drug policies are continually compromised • A focus on ‘reforming’ and/or ‘rehabilitating’ the individual and/or the community is not enough • Need to focus on structural change and ‘drug proofing’, other public and social policies, such as: • Housing policies (design, management, allocation) • Urban planning and regeneration programmes • Economic/Employment policies • Education policies

14. MEDIUM TERM Social care rather than social control Interconnected services for interconnected needs Treatment – drug user as a patient rather than deviant Community development approach to drugs work LONG TERM Tackle inequalities Universal policies and services Education - equality Housing – design, management and allocation policies Wealth distribution Policy responses?

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