Feature

They’re all shook up

Our response to drug-taking should begin by looking again at the everyday pressures on young people, says Keith Popple

Young people have always been a worry to society. Social history is littered with accounts of how adults, whether as parents or teachers, or in the guise of legislation, have focused on maintaining young people in a state of dependency. For example, by containing young people in an education system that is competitive and hierarchical, they learn from an early age that the best way up is to do as they are told, toe the line, work hard and attain the necessary qualifications. Truancy, or school refusal, is punished with the threat of withdrawal from this system, immediately stigmatising young people and severely restricting their life-chances.

Since the mid-1970s, however, the routes through the transition from childhood to adulthood have radically changed. Young people now know they can do all that is expected of them at school, contribute to the well-being of their local community, even be ‘perfect’ sons or daughters, and yet still they will be entering a world of widespread unemployment with a lack of decent affordable housing.

Evidence shows that compared to 16 years ago, young people are more likely to be unemployed. If they are in work they will be earning proportionally less and their training allowances will be worth less than in 1980. They are in receipt of lower levels of benefit than other adults and they are staying longer in full-time education, which is a wise and worthy move, except that it has been accompanied by cuts in student grant levels.

Young people are faced with examining how best to deal with what appears to be a bleak future. For most it is a matter of buckling down and hoping things will improve. For some of the more determined young people that means making things happen for them. Other young people who have fared badly in the education system and enter the job market at 16 also have choices about how to react, whether to accept that this is their lot in life, or whether to negotiate themselves around their present difficulties. It appears that one major response to the present situation, in young people from all social classes, whether employed, unemployed or studying, and irrespective of gender or ethnic background, is drug taking.

The most authoritative recent findings on this new drug culture have come from the Institute of the Study of Drug Dependency report Drugs Futures published last year. Based on a survey of 700 young people aged 14 to 16 living in northwest England, it shows that the availability of drugs is a normal aspect of what the report calls the ‘leisure-pleasure landscape’. The report found that, by 16, 76 per cent of young people questioned had been in situations where drugs had been available or were offered, while 51 per cent had tried a drug at least once. If the evidence produced by the ISDD is reliable and representative then we are witnessing a major change in young people’s lifestyles. We know from other sources that from their mid-teens onwards, drinking alcohol is almost a norm. What is now emerging is a norm around the use of soft drugs. But what is not happening is a corresponding change of attitudes in adult society to this phenomenon.

One of the most progressive ways forward would be for society to acknowledge and address the changes that young people are experiencing. Policy affecting young people is shaped and enacted by people who often have little real understanding of the pressures faced by youngsters. Similarly the influence of New Right thinking and the emphasis on ‘traditional family life’ has not assisted the emancipation of young people. Parents are often blamed for their children taking drugs, refusing to attend school, not successfully competing in the labour market, engaging in socially unacceptable behaviour, and juvenile crime. Yet the New Right philosophy which claims to liberate people has actually reinforced the dependence of young people on their parents.

What is urgently required is a major rethink of young people’s position in society and a re-examination of the responses and policies that affect them. First, we need to provide young people with living wages, training allowances and student grants. In a society where the rich have been allowed and encouraged to get richer, and the poor poorer, there is an vital need to re-establish social justice. The result will be young people feeling more independent. In return, there is a place for young people making a greater contribution to their local community, and in a real sense feeling some form of ownership for it. At the same time, young people’s parents need releasing from their fears of not being able to properly provide for their young. They too would then feel more inclined to contribute to their local community. Decent affordable housing needs to be more readily available for young people. Finally, it is likely that youth drug taking is here for some time to come. So, we should get the issue out in the open, avoid punitive measures that actually drive young people further into the habit, and look at realistic responses that manage the normalisation of drugs use.