Drug–taking has become an integral part of youth culture and a significant part of the lives even of schoolchildren. But the attitude of adults is opening a new generation gap by forcing them into secrecy, according to the authors of a study published yesterday .
More than half (51 per cent) of more than 700 young people in north-west England, questioned over three years between the ages of 14 and 16, had tried drugs . Many more, 76 per cent had been offered drugs.
Howard Parker, profesor of social policy at Manchester University and head of the project, said half of those , now aged 17, who had not tried drugs expected to do so within the next year. he taks of pick n' mix con sumption by young people, who would as readily smoke a spliff or drop some amphetamines on a Friday night as a down a designer drins or buy a round at the pub. The availability of drugs »is a normal part of the leisur-pleasure landscape«, the report says.
»Over the next few years, and certanly in urban areas , non drug trying adolescents will be a minority group.In one sence, they will be a deviants. Professionals in education, health care and the criminal justice sistem, politicans and parenst, urgently need to acknowledge that for many young people taking drugs has become the norm.«
The trend observed in the report, published by Institute for the study of Drug Dependence, is mirrored in research at Exter University and the British crime Survey, Prof Parker said. The danger is that adult society is refusing to acknowledge it and pushing young people often by expulsion from school, if they get cought.
»We are not having a debate about what is going on, and we are stacking up problems for the future. Real social anger is going to develop,« said profesor Parker
In the semi-private world of youth culture, where the over30s rarely browse, drug informaion and and images abound. Mainstream youth magazines, available in newsagents, run features on the positive and negative effect of illict drugs. House musid titles and lyrics
tell of getting high.Examples cited by the study included Ellis Dee, Pure XTC, Easy E, High on a happy vibe, The Rush, Overdose and Acid Heads.
Advertising and marketing executives are well avare of youth drug culture and use images, music and language to tap into that drug culture, the report claims.Thin, unhealthy junkie looklikes model grunge fashino on the cat walks and in magazines.
A covert vocabulary of drug slang excludes unknowing adults. M25s, Pink Pigs, Red Indians, Shamrocks, Brown Biscuits and Dovse are all ectasy tablets. Bart Simpsons, Batmans and Penguins are LSD trips. The adults thinks the overheard conversation is about television watching, not a halucinogenic experience.
The extent of the permeation of youth culture with drug is shown up in the brake down of old stereotypes. Girls are taking them as mush as boys, says the report, and middle class youth as much as working class. Drugs are readily available at school, in the street, in the pub and the car.
»We must take seriously the possibility that what is offically defined as a soluble social problem is in the fact a functional and powerfull social porcess. If we begin to view this generation's engagement with drugs as a form of consumption...than our conclusions about the management of the present and influence on the future look very different,« says the report.
The biggest problem, says Prof Parker, is the growig generation gap . »You don t get families discussing drugs. There is no open discussion between the head teacher and the lower sixth because he is just expelled someone for drugs. Young people are convinced that any whiff of drugs from the bedroom or anywhere else will.«
