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Drugs and Young People

Explore the prevalence, influences, and responses to drug use in youth culture, including research methods, theories, and practical interventions to address the issue.

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Drugs and Young People

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  1. Drugs and Young People Troubles of Youth 23rd February 2009

  2. Lecture Outline • Researching • Prevalence and Trends • Influences, Explanations and Debates • Drugs-Crime Links • Responses and Interventions

  3. Researching Drug Usage (1) • Police Reports • Heavily dependent on policing / customs investigation and recording practice • Increase in warning for cannabis use • Drug-Testing of Offenders • Atypical

  4. Researching Drug Usage (2) • Self-report declarations • Accuracy • Honesty • Willingness to declare

  5. Young People’s Self-declared useJ Hoare and J Flatley (2008) Drug Misuse Declared: Findings from the 2007/08 BCS

  6. Gender and Ethnicity:Use of any drug: Ever, Last year, Last month

  7. Lifestyle Correlates

  8. Influences, Explanations and Debates • Why do people take drugs? • Addiction • Mainstream and medical • Quite specific medical meaning: a much more loosely defined social use • Underplays choice, context and the vast majority of drug use • Peer Pressure • More social • Peer subcultures can offer support for drug use; status; values supportive of drug-use • Underplays choice: many teen experimenters are strong individualists • Pharmopsycholgical effects (pleasure!) • Links between choice of drug and particular social trends? • Consumer Culture • Links to an increasingly diverse consumer culture

  9. Influences, Explanations and Debates • Problematic Drug Use • Typical? • Addiction • Purity • Social context, rather than drug use • Gateway Theories • Experience of some drugs leading on to others • Some analytical problems • Reasons? • Psychological; social; empirical?

  10. The Normalisation ThesisSee Howard Parker et al (1998) Illegal Leisure • A growth in the use of drugs by young people • Deviant acts -> mainstream leisure • A weakening of the correlations between drug use and gender, ethnicity, social class • A central part of youth culture • The policing of drugs requires the identification of ‘problem’ drug users

  11. Counter Arguments • Ignores impacts of drug use • Research approach: ‘naturalism’ • Counter evidence • Short-term fluctuations • Drug use esp. adolescent use now in decline • Failure to adequately consider different types of drug use • Experimentation v. problematic use, and relation between them • Dominance of certain drugs (cannabis, ecstasy) • A conflation of cultural prevalence and use • An exaggeration of cultural change

  12. Drugs "Stickiness": %age of "Ever Used" who have used in past month

  13. Drug-Crime Links • Correlation is not causation! • There is strong evidence that those who commit (other) crime also use drugs • Self-report studies • Possible ‘willingness to admit’ bias? • Police and Prison Testing • Skewed samples • Causal Direction • Crime -> Drugs OR • Drugs -> Crime Trevor Bennet and Katy Holloway (2004) ‘Drug use and offending: summary results of the first two years of the NEW-ADAM programme’ Home Office,

  14. Plausible Drug-crime Links • Drug Use -> crime • Crime -> Drug use • 3rd Factor causes both • Drug Use makes you a worse criminal: easy to catch

  15. The Drugs / Acquisitive Crime Link(Hough, M et al (2001) Drugs and Crime: What are the Links?, Drugscope) • Economic Necessity (Drug Use  Crime) • Facilitating Crime (Crime  Drug Use) • Crime provides the money, contacts for drug use, or a lifestyle that produces a need for drugs • A complex combination of the above two • Both Drug Use and Crime are caused by a common factor e.g. social exclusion Not incompatible with each other All drug use or problematic drug use?

  16. The Drugs / Violence Link • Paul Goldstein, (1985) • Psycho-pharmacological Model: drugs make people more violent • Economic Compulsion: acquisitive violent crime to feed habit • Violent and Drugs Subculture overlap

  17. Responses and Interventions • Legal Responses • Drugs (Re-)Classification • Counselling, Therapy, Motivational Work • Drugs Education • Family Support • Community Interventions • Criminal Justice Responses • Arrest Referrals • Drug Testing and Treatment Orders

  18. Possible Outcomes of Interventions • Abstinence • Delaying or Avoiding Starting Using • Stopping Use • Drug Use Reduction • Education • Harm Reduction • Enforcement • Deterrence • Supply Disruption

  19. ? Jan 2009 Drugs (Re-)Classification • Harm? Criminal Justice Response? Prevention? • Political Expediency?

  20. Drug Testing and Treatment Order • Introduced CDA 1998 • Probation Supervision plus offending and drug treatment programmes: lasts 6 month -> 3 years • Low completion rates (28%) • Non completion due to non-compliance (44%) or further conviction (22%) • Reflect generally chaotic lifestyles

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