Unconventional? Adolescent Drug Triers and Users in England

Abstract

In this chapter we summarise the results of a longitudinal study of nearly 3000 young people in northern England, in respect of their changing drugs ‘status’ across adolescence. We try to provide a moving picture of how, across adolescence, drugs pathways unfold, thereby, producing the national statistics we outlined in Chapter 1. We also critically examine the assumptions, found primarily in the American literature and taken up by the UK drugs prevention industry, concerning ‘at risk’ young people. The thrust of this assessment is that those who become regular drug users in late adolescence have personal, social and educational deficits and are at risk of drug ‘abuse’ as a result. However, do today’s British adolescent drug users have these deviant characteristics? Are they ‘vulnerable’ to poor parenting, low educational attainment and a propensity to delinquency? If they are then notions of normalisation are fragile.