The Sociology of Drug Use

Abstract

Something like a coherent sociology of drug use began to emerge during the 1960s. This body of work was closely related to broader developments in criminology and was largely formulated under the umbrella of the ‘new’ deviancy theories, which helped to inspire such seminal contributions as Howard Becker’s (1963) Becoming a Marihuana User and Jock Young’s (1971) The Drugtakers. Criminological preoccupations soon shifted, however, and with them interest in the sociology of drug use faded. Remarkably little work was carried out in this field during the next couple of decades and it is only fairly recently that sociologists have begun to make up for their previous lack of engagement. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the marked increases in drug use that occurred during the intervening period, much recent commentary has emphasised the extent of change and the need for new forms of understandings. In responding to this apparent need the sociology of drug use has fallen prey to a form of chronocentricism, whereby disciplines forget their past and get caught up in a recurring cycle of new beginnings (Rock, 2005). Nowhere is this more evident than in the critique of deficit based perspectives, which attribute drug use to individual pathology and/or social dysfunction. Recent studies have made much of rejecting such perspectives, but, in so doing, have repeated many of the themes that were central to earlier work.

... if ever there was a time when the answers [to the many questions about the past, present and future place of drugs in our society and culture] were straightforward, it is surely not today.Drug use may still represent a route to ‘unreality’ and a means to slip away from the constraints of routine, but today, in many more different ways for many more different people, drug use is actually a part of the ‘paramount reality’ of everyday life (South, 1999: 1 and 4, original emphasis).