Transcript Document

Drug use and social exclusion:
the implications for policy
Dr Aileen O’Gorman
School of Applied Social Sciences
University College Dublin
aileen.ogorman@ucd,ie
Scottish Drugs Forum
Drug problems and poverty
– the poor relations?
22 June 2006
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Key issue
Drug use is a widespread social
phenomenon. Yet, ‘problem drug
use’ is concentrated in socially and
spatially excluded neighbourhoods.
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Key questions
• What is a drug problem?
• Why ‘social exclusion’?
• How are socially excluded
neighbourhoods created?
• What is the ‘lived experience’ of a
socially excluded neighbourhood?
• What is the relationship between living
in a socially excluded environment and
developing a drug problem?
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Risk environments for problem drug use (1)
• Educational disadvantage
 Primary level
 Early school leaver
 3rd level education
(34% - 51%)
(36% - 72%)
( 2% - 20%)
• Unemployment
 ‘joblessness’
 long-term
(54% - 76%)
(51% - 73%)
• Imbalanced social class composition
 Professionals
 ‘Unclassified’
(0.4% - 4%)
(13% - 45%)
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Risk environments for problem drug use (2)
• High population density
 Total population
 15-29 age group
(5,500 – 32,000)
(25% - 40%)
• Population instability
(-11% - + 22%)
Cumulative & interconnected
variables
Dynamic of social exclusion in a
risk environment
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The ‘meaning’ of drug (heroin) use
•
Part palliative, part ‘buzz’
• Gives structure and routine to their day
• Gives status, identity, respect
you've nothing to do, you're bored silly, you
haven't even got your pride, you don't know who
you are when you've no work. At least if you're an
addict it's something, ‘I'm a junkie’ do you know
what I mean. You don't have worries when you're
on it you know, you're just - you're happy. You
don't know whether you're happy ‘cos you're
sitting there watching Coronation Street or ‘cos
you're stoned out of your head. And that's, that's
the truth you know It just takes the worry away6.
RISK ENVIRONMENT
O’Gorman (2005)
Poverty
Education
Joblessness
Informal Economy
Drug
Careers
Alternatives & Opportunities
Life Structure
Social Networks
Social Isolation
Policy & Political Context
Prison
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Interpreting the evidence
Could have been interpreted as a culture of
poverty, an underclass …. Instead found:
 the ‘means’ may be different (constrained
by lack of ‘legitimate’ opportunities) the
desired ‘ends’ similar
 Lethal combination of social exclusion and
cultural inclusion - a surfeit of American
values [of consumption] (cf. J. Young)
 Compensating for exclusion by (over)
identifying with the trappings of
mainstream culture (cf. C. Nightingale)
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Policy Implications?
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The Policy Cycle
Alcock et al. (2004:3)
Identification
of social need
Evaluation of
policy & effects
Policy
Proposals
Implementation
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Analysing the policy discourse
• Dominance of neo-liberal, ‘new right’, ideology
– the culture of poverty thesis; welfare
dependency; different values from mainstream
- the underclass analysis
• Stress on personal failings, family dysfunctions
etc. (rather than a failing of the economic and
political system)
• Communities of poor people treated as social
problems (rather than a product of
inequalities)
• Focus on crime and anti-social behaviour;
drugs presented as the threat (rather than
being symptomatic of other issues)
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Implications for policy
• Focus of drugs policy shifts from public health and
harm reduction policies to law enforcement &
supply control
• Criminalisation of social policy - social control
rather than social care becomes the dominant
policy concern
• Drug users subjected to control and surveillance
through the drug treatment system, the criminal
justice system, and the welfare system
• Moralisation of drugs and social policy – only
those willing to be reformed and rehabilitated will
be included and assisted. Others will be punished
(benefits cut; ASBOs; prison; homeless).
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Policy Response based on evidence
• Solutions to drug problems cannot be found in
drug policies alone
• The failure to take broader social, cultural,
political and economic context into account in
explaining why people living in poor and excluded
neighbourhoods develop drug problems means
that drug policies are continually compromised
• A focus on ‘reforming’ and/or ‘rehabilitating’ the
individual and/or the community is not enough
• Need to focus on structural change and ‘drug
proofing’, other public and social policies, such
as:
–
–
–
–
Housing policies (design, management, allocation)
Urban planning and regeneration programmes
Economic/Employment policies
Education policies
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Policy responses?
MEDIUM TERM
• Social care rather than
social control
• Interconnected
services for
interconnected needs
• Treatment – drug user
as a patient rather
than deviant
• Community
development approach
to drugs work
LONG TERM
• Tackle inequalities
• Universal policies and
services
• Education - equality
• Housing – design,
management and
allocation policies
• Wealth distribution
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References
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