International Journal of Drug Policy 12 (2001) 425–428

Response

Reasoning and restricted choices within recreationalrepertoires

Neil HuntKent Institute of Medicine and Health Sciences, Uni�ersity of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, UK

Received 23 July 2001; accepted 2 August 2001

www.elsevier.com/locate/drugpo

Introduction

Within one of the most illuminating longi-tudinal studies of drug use among youngpeople in England, Williams and Parker (inpress) provide further useful evidence thatdrug repertoires are broadening, that druguse decisions are becoming more sophisti-cated and that legal sanctions against illicitdrugs have diminishing salience for youngadults in Britain.

They chart part of a trajectory that thepundits—drug experts, academics, social andcultural commentators—can only begin toguess at over the time scales that are of mostinterest. For example, who in the year 1900could have predicted phenomena, such as:the prohibition of opium and cocaine; thedevelopment and demise of the ‘British Sys-tem’; the rise and fall of barbiturate use; theemergence of rave culture and widespreadecstasy use; the impact of HIV on drug useand the shape of drug services; and the recentresurgence in heroin and cocaine use? Never-theless, Williams and Parker’s paper invites

some speculation about the direction of druguse in English society and the possible impli-cations for a national strategy.

Cocaine transitions

The marked rise in cocaine use reported inthe study by Williams and Parker reflects theincreasingly globalised nature of drug usepatterns, the repercussions of a saturatedAmerican market, and producers’ consequentdecisions to market cocaine within Europe.This has combined with a relatively affluentand drug-experienced generation, within aculture that celebrates consumption to anextraordinary degree. As is evident, theseconditions produce a society that is ready toadopt a drug that has a functionally brief andenjoyable stimulant effect, with a real pricethat is lower than ever, whilst still retainingsome residue of the celebrity cache withwhich it has long been associated. Thedemonising of cocaine as a class A drug on apar with heroin is inconsistent with the expe-

0955-3959/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII: S 0955 -3959 (01 )00106 -2

N. Hunt / International Journal of Drug Policy 12 (2001) 425–428426

rience of many members of this full-employ-ment generation for whom the immediateexperience is that of a drug, which is unprob-lematic to obtain or use alongside work andother activities. For the moment, a clear de-marcation exists for this group between theuse of cocaine powder from that of crackcocaine, which continues to be perceived as aproblem drug of the urban poor and there-fore largely avoided. This produces few im-pediments to cocaine powder’s continuedadoption. As with the pattern of NorthAmerican cocaine use (Bachman et al., 1990),we should expect this to proceed until acombination of market saturation and agrowing accumulation of visible British‘celebrity’ cocaine casualties occur in the me-dia and within people’s immediate social net-works. This is then likely to cause aplateauing in cocaine use within 5–10years.

Consumption and the life course

Despite the observed upsurge of cocaineuse and the persistence of alcohol for these 22years olds, the overall trend for this group islikely to be one of a generally diminishing useof cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and alcoholacross the life-course. Within this ‘socially-in-cluded’ group, recreational drug use will stillhave to compete with other leisure pursuits,the demands of work and a delayed familylife. A fraction of this group seem likely to‘reinvent’ their use of ecstasy in other culturalforms, such as that of the ecstasy users fromthe professions described by Rosenbaum etal. (1989). A still smaller fraction of theirpeers will ‘discover’ ecstasy, cocaine andother drugs in later life and occasionally in-corporate it into a widening range of pre-ferred intoxicants. A recent story of a ‘middleaged ecstasy eater’ (Guardian, 2001) nicely

illustrates this contribution to the erosion ofthe notion of illicit drug use as an exclusivefeature of ‘youth’ lifestyles.

It is worth emphasising that just as it seemsthat illicit drug repertoires are being sus-tained for longer into adulthood, a comple-mentary process, elongating drug careers, hasbeen occurring at the beginning of adult-hood. In a post-modern world young peopleare increasingly important as consumers, whoare ‘adultised’ at an earlier and earlier age.Progressively earlier drug use has been a fea-ture of this in the UK over the 10 years.Whilst welcome, the recently observed level-ling in drug use among young people inBritain noted by the authors may yet proveto be a temporary blip. One interesting ex-planatory hypothesis for an observed reduc-tion in smoking amongst British youth—andconceivably the use of other drugs—has beenthe absorption of spending on mobile phonesand the capacity these have for signifyingadult status as opposed to ‘old technology’smoking (Charlton and Bates, 2001). Regard-less, what we know of the role of early druguse as a predictor of later drug problemsmeans that policies to delay drug experimen-tation remain a high priority within nationaldrug strategies— though effective ways ofachieving this are conspicuous by theirabsence.

Reason and choice

The notion of ‘reasoned choice’ used bythe authors is useful and seems applicable—but only up to a point. The choices thisgeneration is making are made from a ratherrestricted range of the enormous pharmaco-poeia of intoxicants from which they couldpotentially be drawing: one to which thepharmaceutical industry will continue to addperiodically, as with Viagra.

N. Hunt / International Journal of Drug Policy 12 (2001) 425–428 427

The historical position of alcohol and to-bacco and the powerful industries promotingthese drugs mean that these still predominatein a way that is not necessarily ‘reasonable’ interms of health, hedonism or other functionsof intoxication. Writing this as someone, whois in the midst of yet another tobacco smok-ing lapse reasoned choice seems an especiallypoor explanation for the widespread use of ahighly addictive drug, with such well knownchronic effects on health, by a third of thestudy sample.

As has already been noted, the currentadoption of cocaine seems driven by macro-economic aspects of drug markets, as muchas reasoned choice. Finally, among the widerange of possible phenethylamines that couldbe used, MDMA may well predominate, be-cause of its cultural and historical embeddingin rave and club culture—a form of ‘lock-in’seen with other innovations, such as the ine-fficient QWERTY keyboard, or with the infe-rior VHS video format. Though ecstasy’s usewould, of course, be quickly discontinued if itwas not a ‘good enough’ drug for its purpose.

These observations are not to deny thatthis sample are using a wider range of sub-stances in a more deliberate and reasonedway, but merely to argue that reasonedchoice has some obvious constraints as asufficient explanation of the patterns of druguse that are observed.

Implications

As the authors amply demonstrate, thisgeneration of young adults have experienceof a range of substances, either personally orthrough their friendship networks, to an un-precedented degree. Interestingly, these arethe next generation of parents and policymakers: over half of whom will have experi-ence of one or more illicit drugs, mostly as

something benign, pleasurable, sometimesover-hyped or unremarkable and rarelyproblematic.

Although they will share the anxieties ofeach generation of parents before them, theywill be less ready to give their children simpleinvocations to abstain from all drugs. Theywould not be quite so prone to the moralpanic that has generally characterised the re-lationship between them and their own par-ents with regard to drugs. And they will beable to draw on personal knowledge andexperience of drug use within a discourse inwhich they are concerned to reduce drug-re-lated harm among their own children. Theywill consequently give a more ambivalentmessage about the morality of drug use and,to the extent that parental disapproval hasany bearing on drug use, will consequentlybring their children up in a more permittingenvironment. Albeit one in which parents arebetter equipped to contribute credible andpractical health advice regarding drug use. Intime, the United Kingdom’s national strategywill have to accommodate a very differentgroup of ‘drug-using parents’, who will beboth more numerous and culturally dis-crepant from the stereotypical, impoverished,problematic drug user.

This forthcoming generation of parentswill also be less tolerant of legislation thatcriminalized them or their friends—and con-tinues to do so for that minority of thesample, who continue to use different drugsrecreationally into later adult life. Nor willthey be so tolerant of laws that criminalizetheir own children for what they have mostlycome to perceive as relatively harmlessyouthful indiscretions occurring as part oftheir leisure lifestyle en route to adulthood.On the inter-generational time scale, drug lawreform looks increasingly likely: with healthand social consequences that cannot be fully

N. Hunt / International Journal of Drug Policy 12 (2001) 425–428428

predicted. What is less certain is whether thiswill take the form of adjustments within theexisting framework of international law orwhether the UN declarations will themselvesbe amended to reflect these social changes.

For me, these findings particularly chimewith my recent reading from the book ‘Out ofit ’ of Walton (2001) and his heralding of agrowing sophistication in the appreciation ofthe place of intoxication within society.Williams and Parker provide some evidencethat this is indeed occurring within this gen-eration—even among people, who have nothad the benefit of reading Walton’s book.Whether this particularly requires any specialresponse within a national drugs strategy willonly become evident as the experiment un-folds.

References

Bachman JG, Johnson LD, O’Malley PM. Explainingthe recent decline in cocaine use among youngadults: further evidence that perceived risks anddisapproval lead to reduced drug use. Journal ofHealth and Social Behavior 1990;31:173–84.

Charlton A, Bates C. Decline in teenage smoking withrise in mobile phone ownership: hypothesis. BritishMedical Journal 2001;321:1155.

Guardian newspaper, Confessions of a middle-agedecstasy eater. July 14th 2001 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4221087,00.html).

Rosenbaum M, Morgan P, Beck JE. Ethnographicnotes on ecstasy use among professionals. Interna-tional Journal on Drug Policy 1989;1(2):16–9.

Walton S. Out of it. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2001.Williams L, Parker H. Alcohol, cannabis, ecstasy and

cocaine: reasoned choice amongst young adultrecreational drug users in England. InternationalJournal of Drug Policy, in press.