Risk, welfare and the treatment of adolescent cannabis users in England

Incorporating analysis of data collected from a small sample of interviews within drug-treatment settings, the aim of this article is to critically consider the purpose and scope of adolescent drug treatment with a particular focus on the drugs–crime nexus. A central question is whether treatment can be understood according to the ‘rise of risk’ in advanced liberal democracies, and whether this corresponds to the proposed rupture with ‘welfarist’ approaches to youth justice policy. The findings suggest, in line with other research, that any such rupture may have been overstated. They also suggest that some drug-treatment research has tended towards sweeping accounts of policy changes, when the specificities of age, drug type and history demand more nuanced explanation, as some authors have already argued. Finally, the analysis suggests there should be concern about the extent of ‘net-widening’ within the youth drug-treatment system

Substance misuse and parenting: Making drugs and gender in the Family Court

Children tend to be represented as the quintessential victims of the ‘drug problem’, with drug-using parents, particularly mothers, characterised as vectors of the risks posed. Although evidence of drug use is not per se an impediment to retaining care of, or contact with, children (per Lady Hale in Re B [2013] UKSC 33, at para. 143), it does pose one of the greatest challenges to social and political norms about ‘good parenting’, and often has a powerful impact on decisions about care within UK family courts. While there is a considerable body of scholarship assessing criminal justice responses to drug use, there has been little research into how the family serves as an important site for the constitution of drug harms and the making of ‘drugs’ and ‘addiction’. This paper is informed by qualitative analysis of approximately 150 case reports in which drug use has been cited as relevant in the determination of guardianship/parenting. The purpose will not be to contest the difficult decisions that judges had to make in these cases but, using perspectives rooted in Science and Technology Studies and feminist drug scholarship, to remain attendant to the ontological multiplicity of objects that emerge from attempts to stabilise drug harms in legal narratives

Drug law reform, performativity and the politics of childhood

Children are critical to debates about drug law reform. For both advocates of liberalisation and, especially, defenders of prohibition, the protection of children is an important rhetorical device in pressing for, or resisting, change. However, the privileged position of minors within such discussions, or talk about drugs in general, has rarely been explored in any depth in either drug and alcohol studies or legal research. Drawing on scholarship on performativity, and particularly John Law's work on 'collateral realities', this article will consider how constructs such as childhood and drugs are 'produced' and '(re)made' in such discourses. Through analysis of legal measures, policy documents/statements submitted to the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) in 2016, and scientific discussion, it will be argued that such 'realities' include the constitution of the child as the logical victim of drugs (and the natural beneficiary or casualty of reform), and the enactment of drugs as an inherent threat to children. It is suggested that drug policy research needs to pay attention to age as a social construct and cultural category, and that a critical awareness of the relevance of age in policy discourse is as necessary as, for example, race, class or gender. Moreover, attendance to the ontological politics of constructs such as 'childhood' and 'drugs' is important if law and policy measures are to account for young people's agency

The Night and Cultural Benefit : The Case for a Holistic Approach to Licensing

This research article critically engages with the Licensing Act (2003), arguing for a more holistic approach to licensing. Drawing on primary research conducted in London for the Greater London Authority (GLA), the article considers the positive benefits of licensed venues and the possibility of extending the licensing objectives to include their role in sustaining urban vitality. The current licensing objectives are steered towards minimising negative outcomes, with the assumption being that licensing is primarily a tool of control and minimising harm. The argument developed here is based on two alternative conceptions of the role of licensing. Firstly, licensing has a key role to play in developing sites for sociability and community cohesion. Though focused around alcohol, licensing is central to enabling or constraining more traditional as well as emerging spaces which combine entertainment, dining and other experimental forms of leisure. Second, the article argues that by addressing urban vitality and cultural benefit, the Act could be more attuned to the positive influence of licensed premises at a broader scale. The need for planning and licensing to work more cooperatively is considered in light of how licensing decisions reach beyond individual venues and impact on entire neighbourhoods or areas. Focusing on two London boroughs, Croydon and Lambeth, the paper examines how the current approach by local authorities to licensing could therefore be re-framed in more positive terms to acknowledge the wider cultural benefits and social good of licensed premises

Making drug harms: Punishments for drugs offenders who pose risks to children

Images of children are routinely used in discourses on drugs, offering a compelling rationale for adopting particular policy positions or legislative reforms. However, the importance of childhood to the constitution of drug harms, and the punishment and subjectification of drug users and offenders, have rarely been the subject of enquiry, whether within drug and alcohol studies, criminology or legal studies. Scholarship on criminal sentencing in England and Wales is also relatively sparse, and has been dominated by analyses of the ‘legal-rational’ logic of particular provisions or reforms. This paper, which relies on the premise that drugs and their effects are constituted through discourse, and are thus contingent, variable and unstable, identifies the ‘collateral realities’ (Law, 2011) that are enacted during legislative and judicial attempts to stabilize the harms caused by drugs to children and communities

Designing a fashion driving forces website as an educational resource

Electronic educational resources support search activities and manipulate information effectively in learning environments, thus enhancing education. This paper discusses the development of an electronic timeline database that classifies design and fashion details; technological developments; socio-economical influences; availability and popularity within fashion trends; marketing and distribution; and influential people including designers, in a manner that facilitates ease of cross referencing events at the same point in time for a rich analysis of fashion. The study focuses on the driving forces of fashion during the 1920s as a starting point for a much larger database. The data is presented in the form of a website allowing students to better understand fashion trends with macro-environmental and marketing strategies. The electronic resource is a useful tool for fashion, textile and marketing students as an educational interface providing design, production and marketing data for fashion-related products particularly useful for the analysis of fashion trends

The return of the fifties: Trends in college students' values between 1952 and 1984

Five identical surveys were carried out in 1952, 1968–1969, 1974, 1979, and 1984 among undergraduate men at Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan to measure value trends. In most value domains the trends are U-shaped, showing that the trends from the fifties to the sixties and seventies have reversed, and attitudes in 1984 were either similar to the fifties or moving in that direction. The domains include traditional religion, career choice, faith in government and the military, advocacy of social constraints on deviant social groups, attitudes about free enterprise, government and economics, sexual morality, marijuana use, and personal moral obligations. Two attitude areas do not show a return of the fifties: (1) other-direction was high in 1952, then dropped to the sixties and did not rise; (2) the level of politicization rose greatly from 1952 to the sixties, then dropped again only slightly.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45659/1/11206_2005_Article_BF01106623.pd