Muddy waters?: Reassessing the dimensions of the normalisation thesis in twenty-first century Britain

Abstract

In Britain, during the 1990s, there was a sharp increase in recreational drug use, and by the end of the decade, it had reached unprecedented levels. The normalisation thesis offered an explanation for increasing drug trends. It argued that drug use was undergoing a process of normalisation whereby it was becoming more acceptable within mainstream society. Since the millennium, British government statistics have recorded a downward trend in overall drug use, perhaps an early sign that recreational drug use is becoming denormalised in Britain. This paper reconsiders the normalisation thesis drawing on British trend data collected since the millennium. It argues that evidence is contradictory and it is challenging to reach a conclusion about the extent of normalisation. At best, the situation fits with the idea of “differentiated normalisation”. The analysis presented raises questions about the utility of the concept in the twenty-first century and the paper concludes with a discussion of how it might be developed in the future.

• Acceptability of recreational drug use
• drug trends
• normalisation thesis
• recreational drug use

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Judith Aldridge, Rob Ralphs, the reviewers of this article and the editors of this special issue for extremely useful comments on initial drafts of this paper. Thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the later stages of the study.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest. The author is solely responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Notes

¹ Readers are referred to Aldridge et al. (2011: 218–23) for a full discussion of the critique from Shiner and Newburn, and the response to it.

² Although the concept allows us to assess change over time, drugs researchers have used cross-sectional research designs to identify the extent of normalisation at one point in time, providing a snapshot of the prevalence and acceptability of drug use in particular settings or social groups (see, Hammersley et al., 2003). While these studies are valuable in understanding how normalisation operates in different contexts, they cannot help us appreciate movement away from or towards normalisation. This paper relies primarily on quantitative trend data, however, if it were available, qualitative longitudinal data would also be useful in this regard.

³ The survey collects data on recreational and non-recreational drugs, such as crack cocaine and heroin. However, because the survey uses a household sample it is less likely to capture non-recreational drug use and, therefore, the data discussed here is likely to comprise mainly of recreational drugs.

⁴ Measham (2004) argues changing trends in illegal drug use cannot be viewed in isolation from legal drugs, especially alcohol. The constraints of this paper do not allow space for a complete analysis of alcohol consumption trends by age. However, during the early millennium in the United Kingdom, there was a rise in binge drinking among young people, now in decline, indicating the continued pursuit of intoxication, and as Measham suggests, the “normalisation of determined drunkenness” (p. 321). Nevertheless, the extent to which changes in illegal drug use and alcohol use trends are directly linked is questionable and a variety of other factors may account for the changes witnessed (Measham, 2008).

⁵ In 2014/2015, the CSEW included, for the first time, a question on the consumption of prescription-only painkillers.

⁶ Some of the following data again includes drugs that are not used recreationally, for example, heroin and crack cocaine. However, the aim here is to assess overall trends, therefore, we may assume that downward and upward trends have not been significantly affected by these individual drugs.

⁷ Interestingly, the requirement to police drug markets via the criminal justice system is being challenged by police in the County of Durham, England, who no longer arrest small-scale cannabis growers or occasional cannabis users (Bealum, 2015).

⁸ In particular, they argued drug abstainers were anti-drugs, as indeed, were drug users. Accordingly, the latter use techniques of neutralisation to diminish their guilt about behaviour that is normatively defined as immoral. As Aldridge et al. (2011) argue, Shiner and Newburn’s critique lacks subtlety and an awareness of how drug takers may reject some aspects of wider consensus values. This is evident in statements like: “Drug taking is fun, but I do not let it take over my life”.