Authentic advice for authentic problems? Legal information in Australian classroom drug education

Abstract

This article examines the legal information provided in Australian alcohol and other drug (AOD) classroom education documents. We focus first on the technical presentation of the information, analysed using Petraglia’s notion of ‘authenticity’ and, second, on the constitution of particular ‘problems’, analysed using Bacchi’s concept of ‘problematisation’. We argue that in working towards deterrence, drug education provides legal information in two ways. First, much of the information focuses on the legal status of drugs, warning young people about the illegality of drugs. Second, information is communicated through structured group activities posed as creating opportunities for discussion. We argue that these strategies aim for a goal of deterrence and that this fits awkwardly with Australia’s avowed commitment to harm reduction drug policies. We argue further that young people’s relationship with the legal aspects of AOD use is too complex for these approaches and the goal of deterrence generally to be productive. In contrast, we propose an approach to drug education that includes a process of open problematisation in which students are invited to consider all aspects of use including the current regulation of drugs. We argue that approaching drug education in this way may more effectively inform about current legal arrangements and encourage the identification of potential problems and solutions more relevant to the lives of its audiences.

Keywords:

• Drug education
• harm reduction
• legal information
• authenticity
• problematisation
• Carol Bacchi
• Joseph Petraglia

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Notes

1 The internet searches for these documents were performed using Google’s standard search field. Search terms: ‘drug education’, ‘drug education resources’, ‘drug education resources for teachers’, ‘secondary drug education’, ‘drug information’, ‘drug info’, ‘harm reduction drug education’, ‘harm reduction resources’, ‘harm minimisation education’ and ‘harm minimisation resources’. Once the initial searches were performed, resources that were produced by Australian state and federal government departments, for example the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training (DET) (formally Commonwealth Department of Education, Science, and Training) or university research departments were chosen for close analysis. A similar description of the project method first appeared in Farrugia (2017).

2 All resources were collected by the first author for a project analysing the constitution of young people’s drug consumption in 63 Australian drug education texts. The texts gathered can be divided into two categories: school-based classroom resources (n = 24) and social marketing campaigns designed for public dissemination (n = 39). At the time of collection all materials were available on Commonwealth and state government or government funded organisations’ websites that specifically targeted young people or school staff seeking resources. Excluded materials were those targeting primary school-aged children and those produced by religious organisations. Importantly, resources concerned only with alcohol and other licit drugs were excluded from analysis. The problematisations of licit drugs, such as alcohol, are partly constituted by their legal status and as such require a dedicated analysis that is beyond the scope of this research.

3 See https://www.positivechoices.org.au/ (accessed online 2 May, 2017).

4 See page 3 of Drugs & the law: What you need to know. Available online at: https://positivechoices.org.au/documents/CCPlWE3eBQ (accessed 22 June, 2017).

5 Cannabis: Know the risks! (New South Wales Department of Education, 2001) for example, states that abstinence approaches alone are insufficient and that harm reduction strategies are an important way to make ‘cannabis education more relevant in a world where drug use is a fact of life for many young people’ (p. 22). Similarly, the teacher notes of Choices: Alcohol and other drugs (Government of Western Australia, 2009) inform that the resource is focussed on providing students with an ‘understanding of the benefits of taking a harm reduction approach to the use of alcohol and other drugs’ (p. 22).