Risk and Substance Use

This interdisciplinary collection examines the role that alcohol, tobacco and other drugs have played in framing certain groups and spaces as 'dangerous' and in influencing the nature of formal responses to the perceived threat. Taking a historical and cross-national perspective, it explores how such groups and spaces are defined and bounded as well as the processes by which they come to be seen as 'risky'. It discusses how issues of perceived danger highlight questions of control and the management of behaviours, people and environments, and it pays attention to the way in which sanctions and regulations have been implemented in a variety of often inconsistent ways that frequently impact differently on different sections of the population. Bringing together a range of case studies drawn from different countries and across different periods of time, the chapters collected here illustrate issues of marginalisation, stigmatisation, human rights and social expectations. It is of interest to a diverse audience of historians, philosophers, human geographers, anthropologists, sociologists and criminologists interested in substance use and misuse, deviance, risk and power among other topics.

Susanne MacGregor is Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University London and Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. Betsy Thom is Professor of Health Policy and Co-Director of the Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at Middlesex University, UK.

1. Introduction: risk and substance use 2. Substance use, dangerous classes and spaces: a historical perspective 3. Methamphetamine users and the process of condemnation in Japan: framing and influence 4. Dangerous drugs, dangerous women: declassé women, drugs and sapphic sexuality in 1930s London 5. Drinking in preganancy: shifting towards the 'precautionary principle' 6. Creating safe spaces in dangerous places: 'Chicks Day' for women who inject drugs in Budapest, Hungary 7. Risk factors and dangerous classes in a European context: the consequences of ethnic framing of and among Turkish drug users in Ghent, Belgium 8. The contemporary complexities of Irish Traveller navigation of drug risk environments 9. Drink, drugs and the 'dangerous poor': fear and loathing in contemporary cities 10. Framing and reframing drug 'problems' in prison spaces and populations 11. Deviant and dangerous: queer adults, smoker-related stigma and tobacco de-normalisation 12. Coming out of the closet: risk management strategies of illegal cannabis growers 13. Framing substance use problems: influence on key concepts, methods of research and policy orientation 14. Conclusion: risk, danger and policies towards psychoactive substances