Addiction Research and Theory

June, 2005, 13(3): 205–215

Normalization as a barometer: Recreational drug use

and the consumption of leisure by younger Britons
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HOWARD PARKER

School of Law, University of Manchester, 3rd Floor, Williamson Building,

Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

(Received 6 December 2004)

Abstract
For personal use only.

This article discusses the development of the normalization thesis in respect of monitoring sustained
increases in young Britons’ consumption of illicit drugs and alcohol over the past decade. It describes
five dimensions of normalization which have been applied in a cluster of studies undertaken by the
author, highlighting results from the N.W. England Longitudinal Study showing easy accessibility,
high rates of drug trying (76% at 22 years) and long-term recreational drugs careers involving both
alcohol and illicit drugs. The social accommodation of ‘sensible’ substance use was apparent amongst
most drug abstainers in the cohort who routinely had close friends who used drugs ‘recreationally’.
Further cultural acceptance of recreational drug use is described. A sixth dimension – state or govern-
ment responses to widespread recreational drug use – is introduced and illustrated.
The article concludes by emphasizing the negative outcomes associated with recreational poly
substance use in terms of personal and public health highlighting the ‘slippage’ from recreational to
problem drug use as a growing phenomenon. It calls for a more integrative national strategy to
address negative aspects of normalization.

Keywords: Normalization, young Britons, alcohol use, recreational drug use, UK drugs strategy

Normalization as a conceptual tool

The concept of normalization was first utilized in respect of creating ‘normal’ living condi-
tions for people with learning difficulties. Its leading proponent Wolfensberger (1972, 1980,
1984) sociologized the term whereby normalization is about stigmatized or deviant
individuals or groups becoming included in many features of everyday life whereby their
identities or behaviour become increasingly accommodated and perhaps eventually valued.
The author and colleagues, from crude beginnings (Measham, Newcombe & Parker,
1994), have continued to apply and refine the concept in respect of describing and

Correspondence: H. Parker, School of Law, University of Manchester, 3rd Floor, Williamson Building,
Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Tel.: 0161 275-4783. E-mail: howard.parker@man.ac.uk

ISSN 1606-6359 print: ISSN 1476-7392 online ß 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/16066350500053703
 206 H. Parker

explaining an unprecedented and sustained increase in drug use by young Britons. This
epidemiological change accelerated during the 1990s and shows no signs of reversing in
the new millennium. This article will not focus on the academic debate about whether
‘sensible’ recreational drug use has been fully normalized (Parker, Williams & Aldridge,
2002; Shiner & Newburn, 1997) but instead illustrate the added value an appropriate
application of the concept can bring when applied to exploring the lifestyles of young
people in the UK. Normalization is for us a multi-dimensional tool kit, which highlights
the way illicit drugs consumption, particularly by conventional ‘ordinary’ young people,
has grown in importance within lifestyles which are themselves evolving in response to
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structural and global changes in post-modern societies. Normalization is not a coherent

theoretical paradigm; it is more a conceptual framework to monitor, in this case, how
attitudes and behaviour in respect of illegal drugs and drug users change through time.
The same concept can be applied to monitoring how accommodated social behaviour
can become stigmatized as with tobacco use, once normalized in many societies but
now being ‘challenged’ as being dangerous to health and anti-social in many public
places. The normalization framework is best imported into analyses which can measure
social and consumption trends, cultural shifts and, in respect of younger people, transi-
tions to adult citizenship since the assumed wisdom is that adults tend to settle down
and ‘mature out’ of non-dependent illegal substance use in their twenties. Interestingly,
this framework is now being applied to analyse substance use amongst young offenders
who despite an appetite for risk taking and rule breaking often contain and control
For personal use only.

their substance use and avoid pathways into problem drug use (Hammersley, Marsland
& Reid, 2003).
We are concerned specifically with ‘recreational’ drug use in this debate; that is the
occasional use of certain substances in certain settings and in a controlled way. The
issue is whether the ‘sensible’ use of cannabis and more equivocally amphetamines, LSD,
ecstasy and cocaine has become sufficiently widespread and socially accommodated as
to ensure that, first within their own social worlds and then in the wider society, we
see ‘recreational’ drug users and their drug use being acknowledged as unremarkable
and within normative boundaries. This is not to say the same debate cannot be had for
older people or even users of other drugs as the range of papers in this collection clearly
shows.

Some dimensions of normalization

Five dimensions have been operationalized in respect of monitoring young Britons’
attitudes and behaviour to ‘recreational’ drug use over the past decade. The case will be
made for a sixth dimension – state responses in legislation and ‘anti’-drugs strategies –
since we can now see shifts in government policy and enforcement generated by the scale
of illegal drug use.
The first dimension concerns the availability and accessibility of illicit drugs without which
normalization cannot develop. Seizures of all the main illegal drugs climbed tenfold across
the last decade (Cabinet Office, 1999). Street prices have fallen significantly, whilst purity
levels have been maintained (Corkery, 2000; Independent Inquiry, 2000). Furthermore,
the fall in street prices, for instance in respect of cocaine, seems to generate increased
use (Grossman & Chaloupka, 1998).
Drug trying rates in adolescence have also been rising for over a decade in the UK with
what looked like a plateau, then a slight fall near the end of the decade (Balding, 2000)
now rising again in England (Flood-Page, Campbell, Harrington & Miller, 2000; ONS,
 Recreational drug use and the consumption of leisure by younger Britons 207

2001). There is also evidence that the children of the nineties are taking their drug experi-
ence with them in that ‘recreational’ drug use is rising slowly amongst twenty-somethings
on most measures although it must be said we have no systematic barometer of young
adults’ substance use given the frailties of household surveys. However the overall picture
based on studies of university students, nightclubbers and regional self-report studies of
ad hoc populations alongside household surveys is of on-going incremental rises (Parker
et al., 2002).
In respect of recent and regular drug use the normalization process does not require that a
majority of people in a society will take illegal drugs. That the majority of young Britons
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have done so, even on conservative official estimates (Ramsay & Partridge, 1999), is
important but not crucial. Similarly, we do not require regular ‘recreational’ uses to
make up the majority of the younger population. It is sufficient to track growth trends in
recreational drug use over several years to identify the normalization process. This is
broadly the case with the proportion of younger recreational users in England and Wales,
rising from around one in five in the early 1990s to one in three at the end of the decade
(Parker et al., 2002) based on national surveys.
The social accommodation of ‘sensible’ recreational drug use is an essential measure of the
extent of normalization. In particular, we are concerned with the attitudes of (younger)
people who have not taken illicit drugs (abstainers) or those who are adamant they no
longer do so (ex-users). Whilst there are signs of growing accommodation in older people
(see Pearson, 2001), the research evidence is less robust for the overall population
For personal use only.

beyond opinion polls (Independent Inquiry, 2000). This is a complex dimension to

operationalize as it requires youth populations to be collated by their drugs status and
non-users targeted to identify their specific attitudes towards users in respect of different
drugs and styles of use. The ‘results’ (Parker, Aldridge & Measham, 1998a) also suggest
attitudes change through adolescence with more accommodation by abstainers evidenced
in later adolescence. Aside from one study challenging the process (Shiner & Newburn,
1997) and another reaching equivocal conclusions (Wibberley & Price, 2000), the remain-
der of a clutch of qualitative studies in the UK tend to produce findings broadly consistent
with the social accommodation of sensible recreational drug use. The studies also confirm
that young recreational drug users themselves distinguish clearly between, for instance, the
controlled use of cannabis and the dependent use of heroin and crack cocaine (Boys et al.,
2000; Hart & Hunt, 1997; Perri, Jupp, Perry & Laskey, 1997; Young & Jones, 1997). There
is thus a growing body of evidence that abstainers have friendship and ‘going out’
relationships with drug-using peers and respect, if sometimes reluctantly, their right to
use certain drugs recreationally (Pirie & Worcester, 1999). This does not mean that there
will not be a minority of drug abstainers who hold strong anti-drug attitudes and have
no truck with any type of drug use. They will of course appear in surveys and
qualitative research (Macdonald & Marsh, 2002) as they have in our own longitudinal
studies. Social accommodation of an illegal activity is unlikely to ever be complete. Anti-
drug attitudes can emerge from individual biographies, such as having a relative who is
drug dependent or from growing up in a community where a heroin outbreak is
producing visible casualties. Such attitudes can have a protective effect (Parker, Bury &
Egginton, 1998b).
It is very difficult to monitor the wider cultural accommodation of recreational drug use
in discrete societies but in our view there are multiple indicators of increasing
cultural acceptance of recreational drug use in the UK despite its illegality. The role of
the media and film and television series showing and ‘discussing’ recreational drug use
changed across the 1990s with ever more neutral and even positive portraits of illicit
 208 H. Parker

substance use, whether in television dramas (e.g., This Life, BBC2) or popular
mainstream drama series like Cold Feet (ITV1) whereby in February, 2003, one episode
finished with the main characters’ mother/mother-in-law taking cannabis back to an old
person’s residential home to roll up for all the residents who we see having a celebratory
smoking party. Such a scenario would have never been televised in this way a decade ago
and had it been so would have triggered widespread criticism. In fact the episode went
‘unnoticed’. With mainstream movies (e.g., Human Traffic, 1999) and comedy (Ali G,
Channel 4, 2000–01) making light of recreational drug use in the same way, there is
gathering evidence of a shift in the way drug use is presented and understood. The
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normalization concept remains neutral about such change, it is not an ideological

device but a barometer of change.
Finally, it is becoming apparent that with globalization the same processes and changes in
psycho-active consumption within youth culture are being identified in other parts of the
post-industrial world. Dance or club drug use is emerging across the USA, Hong Kong
(Laidler, 2003) and particularly in Australia where our normalization tool kit is being
utilized to explore and explain the blurring of licit (alcohol) and illicit drugs, the importance
of consumption in social identity formation and the steady growth of recreational drug
use amongst younger Australians (Duff, 2003). Hunt (2002) in identifying the inter-
relationship between globalization and recreational drug use makes the important point
that the ‘recreational’ use of a wider range of psycho-active substances in a particular society
is steered by global drug trafficking and marketing, witnessed most recently in respect of
For personal use only.

cocaine (Hunt, 2002).

The Manchester research portfolio

Over the past decade, we have undertaken a series of studies of youth lifestyles and the role
of alcohol and illicit drugs in the leisure preferences of English adolescents and young
adults. Most often these studies have been undertaken and the results published in books
and refereed journals with little reference to the normalization thesis.
In the Northern Regions Longitudinal Study (e.g., Aldridge, Parker & Measham, 1999;
Egginton & Parker, 2001; Parker & Egginton, 2002) the processes we utilized to measure
normalization were described in different ways not least because the term was not welcomed
by its government funders (Home Office) at the time. In a large dance drug–nightclub study
(Measham, Aldridge & Parker, 2001) the limits of normalization in respect of sensible
recreational drug use were noted given the ‘excesses’ of the nightclubbers which had to
be contained in semi-private nightlife venues. Their poly substance use is not socially and
culturally accommodated in ‘everyday’ arenas. In our studies of younger problem drug
users, the dangers of normalization were highlighted in respect of drug sequencing pathways
and ‘slippage’ from recreational to problematic drug use (Egginton & Parker, 2000;
Parker et al., 1998b).
It has been with the North West Longitudinal Study and the Illegal Leisure cohort
(Parker et al., 1998) that we have systematically developed and monitored normalization.
This article briefly summarizes the psycho-active substance careers of this cohort
from when they were 13–14 years in 1991 through to becoming young adults (22–23
years old) a decade later. The process of normalization is clearly represented in the
transitions and lifestyles of this cohort. However, it is equally important to tease out
the implications of these emergent work hard–play hard adult lifestyles for strategic inter-
ventions given that despite the positive functions of recreational substance use, negative
 Recreational drug use and the consumption of leisure by younger Britons 209

outcomes, in respect of public order and public health, are also prevalent (Parker &
Williams, 2003).

The N.W. England longitudinal study

The Illegal Leisure cohort (Parker et al., 1998) were recaptured in 2000–01 when they were
22/23 years old. This cohort (n ¼ 465) are making productive and conventional transitions
into adulthood with half having been through higher education and almost all the remainder
being in employment. Across their adolescence, the percentage of those being in situations
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where drugs have been available for free or to buy rose incrementally from 59% when they
were thirteen (in 1991) to 88% when eighteen to 93% at twenty-two. The most available
drugs have been cannabis followed by amphetamines and ecstasy. Cocaine powder was
available for 23% when they were eighteen, rising to 47% at twenty-two. A separate
survey question about ease of access to street drugs confirmed this availability, with 91%
of the cohort claiming that access to at least one drug was ‘easy’. These survey results
were generally supported by the notion that illegal drugs had become gradually more
‘present’ in everyday life by the in-depth interviews with a representative subsample
(n ¼ 86) of the panel.
An important social mechanism has developed amongst drug active young Britons –
‘sorting’. Sorting is how most recreational drug users procure their drugs at the point of
consumption (Parker, Aldridge & Egginton, 2001). They define their suppliers as ordinary
For personal use only.

people who sell drugs to them as a favour and not primarily for profit. So at 22/23 years, the
majority of those using drugs (65%) nominated friends or friends of friends as their
primary source of supply. Drug ‘dealers’ (15%) are not, as popular discourse insists,
perceived as the key retail outlet. This method of procurement and social re-construction
of a serious criminal offence is an important facet of normalization.
Even in 1991 when the cohort (n ¼ 776) were thirteen, 36% had already tried an
illicit drug. This lifetime prevalence measure rose steadily across the 1990s with 57%
reporting drug trying at seventeen, 63% at eighteen and 76% at twenty-two (Parker et al.,
2002).
In terms of on-going recreational drug use, the same steady rise has been apparent on
past year and past month measures but with a plateau having been reached at twenty-
two. Over half the cohort were drug active in the past year (52%) at recapture and a third
(31%) in the past month. Cannabis use dominates drugs consumption but with a significant
increase in cocaine use (past year 16%). At eighteen, only 6% of the cohort had tried
cocaine yet by twenty-two no less than 27% had done so.
It seems highly likely that the incidence rate of drug use on the main measures will fall
and that prevalence has generally peaked although not for individual drugs such as cocaine.
This cohort has broadly ‘settled’ into drugs status groups and despite delayed transitions to
maturing out (Williams & Parker, 2001) we should not expect any increases in drugs
involvement but some signs of desistence in the next few years. The big question is will
these twenty-somethings actually give up their psycho-active substance use or continue as
heavy drinkers and recreational drug users into their thirties?
At recapture, the cohort were asked about friendship patterns in respect of the four
drug status groups they fell into: current drug takers, opportunistic/occasional drug takers,
ex-drug takers and abstainers. Table I presents the results. Predictably, cannabis is
nominated as the drug which the majority of respondents (85.5%) have close friends who
have taken this substance. Importantly, whilst there are much higher rates of drug use
amongst friends of current and opportunistic drug users, nearly three quarters (72.9%)
 210 H. Parker

Table I. Percentage of 22 year olds by drug status who have at least 1 close friend who has tried individual drugs.

n size Current drug Opportunistic Ex-drug

Column percentage taker 130% drug taker 73% taker 159% Abstainer 101% Total 463%

Amphetamines 91.5 60.3 71.0 28.0 65.9

Amyl nitrites 84.4 52.2 65.0 16.0 57.7
Cannabis 99.2 86.3 96.2 50.5 85.5
Cocaine powder 77.4 33.8 46.8 16.0 46.4
Crack cocaine 23.4 5.6 13.9 5.0 13.1
Ecstasy 85.6 47.1 56.9 25.0 56.3
GHB 9.5 1.4 5.1 2.0 5.1
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Heroin 11.2 9.7 5.6 3.0 7.2

LSD 83.0 38.5 52.2 17.9 51.3
Magic mushrooms 67.2 19.7 35.6 12.0 36.8
Solvents 30.3 9.8 15.9 5.0 16.7
Tranquillisers 29.0 5.6 14.6 2.0 14.5
At least one drug 100.0 100.0 97.3 72.9 93.9

of abstainers have a close friend who has taken an illicit drug including Class A drugs like
ecstasy and LSD.
Finally, we should note the prevalence of crack-cocaine uptake in the friendship patterns
of current and ex-‘recreational’ drug users, an issue to which we shall return.
For personal use only.

Risks, negative outcomes and cost–benefit decision making by young drug users
Cost–benefits and drugs wisdom
The growth in drinking and drug use over the past decade would not have occurred if young
people did not perceive their substance consumption to be enjoyable and functional.
Numerous studies have identified the functions and motives nominated by young substance
users (e.g., Boys et al., 2000). A cost–benefit assessment is informally applied by most
recreational substance users which acknowledges there are risks and downsides to
psycho-active substance use be it alcohol or illegal drugs. Much of our own work has iden-
tified these functions (Measham et al., 2001; Parker et al., 1998; Williams & Parker, 2001).
We have however identified inadequacies or weaknesses in the informal drugs wisdom
which young people utilize in their decision making (Parker and Egginton, 2002).
There is an important public health issue here which is not being addressed. Three
elements will be identified: the role of alcohol, the immediate and longer-term roles and
negative outcomes of recreational substance careers and the danger of ‘slippage’ from
recreational to problematic careers for a small minority.

The centrality of alcohol use

A major difficulty in researching young Britons’ illicit drug use is trying to disentangle it
from drinking episodes and careers. So much recreational drug use occurs during or after
alcohol consumption and indeed in venues (e.g., parties, bars, clubs) where alcohol is
available. Trying to isolate the effects of different substances is confounded by mixing
and poly substance repertoires. Whilst this consumption reality complicates the normali-
zation debate, it is crucial to fully acknowledge the role of alcohol and the blurring of the
distinction within the recreational scene between the licit and illicit in psycho-active
menus.
 Recreational drug use and the consumption of leisure by younger Britons 211

In each of our studies, the centrality of alcohol in young people’s recreational drugs
careers has emerged. For the Illegal Leisure cohort at twenty-two, 78% of the current
drug users group were drinking alcohol when they last took an illegal drug, as were 80%
of the opportunistic drug users (Parker & Williams, 2003). In the Northern Regions
Longitudinal Study eight in ten heavy drinkers at 17/18 years had used illegal drugs
compared with only 15% of non-drinkers. Moreover, of the 499 respondents in this
cohort who had ever taken a drug even in adolescence, a quarter (25.3%) indicated they
had purposefully combined alcohol with an illegal drug (Parker & Egginton, 2002).
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Negative outcomes from poly substance use

That sustained heavy drinking careers pose a serious long-term health risk is not in ques-
tion. The added risks for recreational substance users relate to the health effects of
mixing substances, to the role of alcohol intoxication in adversely affecting drug-taking
decisions and to the immediate in situ effects of multi-substance consumption on the
night out, getting home safely and the ‘recovery’ period. The nightclubbers provide
the best illustration of how risk and negative outcomes emerge from ‘excessive’ poly
substance episodes. In the Greater Manchester study drinking and dance drug use was
the norm. Four in ten interviewees reported an identifiable ‘recovery’ period from a
clubbing weekend which included various combinations of fatigue, impaired performance
For personal use only.

at work and study and general concentration problems. Negative outcome experienced
across clubbing careers included nausea, headaches and particularly bouts of depression
(Measham et al., 2001).
We have written extensively about how a secondary prevention–harm reduction
strategy can be developed and delivered to reduce these risks and adverse experiences
(e.g., Parker & Egginton, 2002). Here we suggest that these downsides and risks of
recreational substance use are a by-product of normalization.

From recreational to problematic drugs careers

A less well-researched issue concerns the slippage of recreational drugs careers into prob-
lematic ones. This is an important drugs pathway which is related to normalization whereby
young users of alcohol, cannabis, amphetamines and ecstasy, having had positive experi-
ences with these drugs, continue to experiment with other substances increasingly acces-
sible via the recreational scene. In a study of very young heroin users (n ¼ 86) from
around England we found that many of these young problem users did not fully fit the
‘vulnerable’, ‘at risk’ typology mainly associated with heroin initiates but instead ‘slipped’
into heroin use through social networks known to them via the recreational scene.
Table II describes the chronology of their drugs initiation whereby at fifteen they had all
already taken heroin in the midst of florid drug-trying careers (Egginton & Parker, 2000).
This same process whereby there is a blurring between hard and soft drugs has been
identified elsewhere in England (Macdonald & Marsh, 2002). In part, at least this drift is
a product of the lack of informal drugs wisdom amongst young people in communities
which have only recently seen heroin arrive and have no negative role models of older
‘smackheads’ to warn them of the effects of dependency (Parker et al., 1998). A similar
process appears to be underway in respect of cocaine powder use prompting the trying of
crack cocaine. Table I also illustrated the presence of crack triers in the friendship patterns
of conventional recreational drug users. We must expect, in the next few years, to see
 212 H. Parker

Table II. Age of initiation and sequencing by drug for young problem
drug users (n ¼ 86).

Tried (%) Mean age first tried (yrs)

Cannabis 98 12.7
Solvents/Gases 66 12.9
Nitrites 77 14.2
LSD 84 14.3
Mushrooms 58 14.3
Amphetamines 92 14.8
Ecstasy 64 15.9
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Heroin initiation
Tranquillisers 82 16.0
Cocaine 55 16.6
Crack cocaine 75 16.7
Methadone 81 16.9

Source: Egginton and Parker, 2000.

a small minority of recreational cocaine powder-taking drug users ‘slip’ into crack
smoking, with all its attendant dangers.
In summary, there are public health concerns emerging from the increases in recreational
alcohol and drug use amongst younger Britons. These risks and downsides clearly do
For personal use only.

not deter a significant minority of young people from embarking on or continuing their
substance use. In part, however, their decisions are based on inadequate information and
understanding of risk particularly in respect of the longer-term health risks of extended
drinking and drug-taking careers and the nature of addiction or dependency.

Discussion
The process of normalization in respect of recreational drug use can only be adequately
assessed utilizing long-term epidemiological and social trends data and ideally longitudinal
studies. The N.W. Longitudinal Study is not representative of English youth but the shift-
ing attitudes and substance-using behaviour of this cohort provide important representa-
tions of what has been occurring over the past 15 years in respect of drugs availability,
trying, regular use and attitudinal shifts in response to widespread recreational drug use.
Our research shows how the process of normalization is unfolding in the everyday lives of
conventional young people adapting to a risk society and work hard–play hard lifestyles
(Williams & Parker, 2001).
Looking at the UK picture overall and utilizing the five dimensions of access and avail-
ability, drug trying, drug use, social accommodation and cultural acceptance, the process
of the normalization of ‘sensible’ recreational drug use continues. In respect of cannabis
use, the process is sufficiently advanced to allow the claim that recreational cannabis use
is largely normalized (Parker et al., 2002). The process is less advanced for stimulant use
although the use of amphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine as ‘going out’ ‘dance drugs’ has
become far more prevalent and accepted in certain social worlds and arenas. However,
the ‘excesses’ of the nightclubbers in respect of stimulant drug use are less accommodated
by more cautious peers (Measham et al., 2001). Moreover, the casualty rate from the cur-
rent cocaine scene will, over the next few years, sully coke’s reputation (Boys et al., 2001).
We should not expect the prevalence of illegal drug trying to continue to rise. Broadly
speaking, we are reaching a situation with the availability and accessibility of street
drugs so strong and with the ‘sorting’ drug distribution phenomenon so robust within
 Recreational drug use and the consumption of leisure by younger Britons 213

conventional populations, that those people who want to try or use illegal drugs can now do
so. Roughly half the youth/young adult population did not try drugs over the 1990s and
with prevalence rates fairly stable in the new decade, there are no signs of imminent
change. It is remarkable enough that several million Britons used an illegal drug ‘last
year’ and that even on very conservative official estimates, four million people in England
and Wales did so in 2001–02 (Aust, Shap & Goulden, 2002). Indeed with official ‘highest’
estimates having been substantially raised in respect of ‘recreational’ Class A drug users to 3
million (Godfrey, Eaton, McDougall & Culyer, 2002) we can expect government
estimates to continue to rise. Once dependence on the British Crime Survey is replaced
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by the planned introduction of more representative survey techniques, which includes

students in higher education (around 40% of 18–22 year olds), government estimates
will be driven up. Currently, it is as useful to count the number of king size rolling
papers sold in the UK each year as to rely on official estimates of past year cannabis use
from this household survey.
Turning to the implications of the normalization debate and the realities of recreational
substance use, a key issue is why government has been unable to think strategically and
managerially about how to respond to the new leisure–consumption patterns of today’s
adolescents – young adults. Why right across the 1990s was the recreational substance
scene undiscussed in consecutive drugs strategies? Why cannot alcohol – the underpinning
of these post-modern recreational psycho-active substance careers – be discussed alongside
illicit drug use? Why cannot the clustering of tobacco–alcohol and drug use found in so
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many of today’s recreational substance careers be identified as a public health issue?

Answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this article but lie in the hegemony of
the political economy. Challenging and stigmatizing the drinks industry and its role in the
night time economy (Parker & Williams, 2003) is not for political realists in government
entrenched in discrete government departments with competing targets and agendas
(Trace, 2003).
Having said this, there are discernible shifts in attitudes and responses to recreational
drug use apparent across the past eight years and signs that State responses are beginning
to shift in line with normalization. Indeed the case for making this a sixth dimension to the
normalization tool kit can now be made.
If we scrutinize the three versions of the UK anti-drugs strategy namely Tackling
Drugs Together (1994); Tackling Drugs To Build a Better Britain (1998) and Updated
Drugs Strategy (Home Office, 2002) we can see noticeable shifts in official responses to
‘non-problem’ drug use. In the original strategy, the war on drugs rhetoric was extended
to all illegal drug use whereby drug trying by adolescents had to be eradicated through
prevention programmes as all drug use was dangerous, health threatening and the beginning
of a spiral into addiction and crime. In New Labour’s 1998 version, there was far more
acknowledgement of the scale of non-problem drug use but still the stigmatizing rhetoric
whereby young people who take drugs cannot ‘reach their full potential’. There were no
signs of any strategic public health response in this strategy. In the latest updated version,
the negative rhetoric has been deleted, all targets about reducing drug use amongst under
25s were predictably removed and an implicit acknowledgement that most drug use is
not seriously problematic has appeared. The new aspirational goal of preventing frequent
use of drugs by young people and their possible slippage into problem drug use is a quietly
executed, but welcome, fundamental shift in official thinking about the need to recognize
recreational drug use being widespread but distinctive from problem drug use most
often associated with heroin and crack cocaine. Coupled with a cautious public health
information campaign (‘Frank’) and the reclassification of cannabis from Class B to
 214 H. Parker

Class C making possession a broadly non-arrestable offence for adults, the shift in thinking
and response is significant and highly indicative of private acknowledgement that recrea-
tional poly substance careers have bedded in.
However, successful interventions in the recreational scene of young go-outers especially
to define a hierarchy of dangerousness and reduce the slippage from recreational to
problematic drug use will be hard to achieve without embracing the realities of their
multi-substance use. If some young people initiate on cocaine whilst drunk or decide
to smoke a crack joint in a night club whilst intoxicated by set, setting and other
substances – as they do – any interventions must be set within a harm–reduction framework.
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The context and content for this are of course the realities of the leisure lifestyles we
have described. There remains a rubicon to cross in official thinking before meaningful
interventions can be effectively introduced therefore. As ever, this will only occur reactively
when we eventually see morbidity amongst men and women in their thirties due to
their extended smoking–drinking and drugs careers which began in mid-adolescence and
continued across their twenties.
Whether or not the normalization model is more widely utilized to understand this shift in
the consumption of leisure amongst young Britons is of little import. The key issue is about
public health and the rights of younger citizens to be fully informed about how to better
manage their going out adventures and acknowledge and contemplate the longer-term
risks associated with their psycho-active substance repertoires and careers.
For personal use only.

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