Ross Coomber - Key Concepts in Drugs and Society

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The SAGE Key Concepts series provides students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension.

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Ross Coomber, Karen McElrath, Fiona Measham and Karenza Moore 2013

First published 2013

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945625

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781-847874849
ISBN 9781-847874856 (pbk)

Ross Coomber, PhD, is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Drug and Alcohol Research Unit at Plymouth University, UK. He has been involved in researching a wide range of issues relating to drug use, drug supply and formal and informal interventions in many societies around the world for over 25 years. He has published extensively within the drug field and is the author of Pusher Myths: Re-Situating the Drug Dealer (2006) and co-editor of Drug Use and Cultural Contexts Beyond the West (2004) (both Free Association Books) among others.

Karen McElrath, PhD, is a Reader in Criminology at Queens University, Belfast, UK. Her current research interests focus on: (1) new psychoactive stimulants; (2) methadone maintenance as social control; and (3) changing patterns of crime in the context of political conflict. Her research is often user-led and she has been actively involved with various drug services and governmental bodies in an advisory capacity. She is the author/editor of three books, over thirty journal articles and book chapters and of numerous reports to government bodies.

Fiona Measham, PhD, is Professor of Criminology at Durham University, UK, and is an internationally renowned researcher with 20 years experience in the field of drug and alcohol studies, gender, licensed leisure and the night-time economy. She is co-author of Illegal Leisure (Routledge, 1998), Dancing on Drugs (Free Association Books, 2001) and Illegal Leisure Revisited (Routledge, 2010), based on large-scale studies of young peoples drug and alcohol use, and co-editor of Swimming with Crocodiles (Routledge, 2008), a cross cultural comparison of young peoples extreme drinking. Fiona is a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a member of the editorial boards of the British Journal of Criminology, Contemporary Drug Problems, Drugs and Alcohol Today and Alcohol and Culture, as well as regular referee for a wide range of academic journals. In recognition of her expertise, she has acted as expert witness in major trials and as consultant to the media.

Karenza Moore, PhD, is Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, UK. She has published widely on illicit drug use, particularly the relationship between drug policy, law enforcement practices and prevalence and patterns of drug use in leisure settings. Karenza has also published on electronic dance music (EDM) cultures and on social aspects of new media technologies.

We are thankful for and would like to acknowledge the help and/or support of Eddie Scouller, Joan Gavin, Ellie Coomber-Moore and Dr Jonathan Chippindall at different times in the course of this project.

When Sage Publications initially approached us to undertake this project there was a mixture of excitement and trepidation mixed with a healthy dose of scepticism. On the one hand, we firmly agreed with the idea itself and believed the drug field to be in need of a text that effectively bridges the gaps between the kinds of texts commonly available to those new to engaging with substance-related issues, but on the other were unsure as to how successful this might be in practice. Commonly, standard textbooks dealing with drugs that are not simply introductory texts will focus in on a specific area (for example, crime; treatment; drug policy) and deal with that in some detail. Alternatively, most introductory texts that cover a greater breadth of material and issues often struggle to provide a sufficiently critical stance on the topics dealt with and provide little more than a basic overview of the areas and also seek to cover almost everything about drug-related issues they can. In some examples this results in huge, very expensive encyclopedias too big to easily dip into and too costly for anything but the most well-endowed libraries. The challenge we accepted then was to provide insight into around 50 areas of interest that relate to substance use in society that we considered to be of the greatest relevance for informing an open-minded audience about the use of drugs in society. Not everything that could have been in the book is in it and the book could easily have been twice as big either in terms of having an extra 50, or more, concepts or by spending twice the length of time on each concept we have included, or both. In the end we have worked within the parameters set by the publisher with one agreeable eye on the laudable aim set by those parameters: to provide accessible, critical insight into important key concepts related to drug use in society that is affordable and portable. The other key difference between this text and nearly all others on the market dealing with drug-related issues is the way that many of the issues are contextualised by reference to a genuinely international perspective. Insight is provided that locates many concepts outside of a simple European or North American context and provides reference where possible to broader relevant geographical examples. In this sense the concepts are all approached with an attempt to provide the reader with a sense of drug use around the world and beyond their own shores. What this does quite clearly in numerous concepts is to provide the reader with an awareness of how, for example, patterns of drug use or risk-taking behaviour, cultures of drug use, approaches to treatment and/or drug control and how drug problems are understood differ from what they may have previously assumed or experienced in their own locality as universal views or practice.