Towards ‘Sensible’ drug information: critically exploring drug intersectionalities, ‘Just Say No,’ normalisation and harm reduction

Abstract

Aim: This article examines the impact of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on drug service interventions using a case study of professional practitioners in South East England. We assess how professionals seek to develop an innovative approach towards providing ‘sensible drug information.’

Methodology: The research methods include observations, and individual and collective ethnographic interviews with 13 professionals who work with young people across the region.

Results: The article theorises sensible because it is a key element in contemporary drug education with a harm reduction approach. Therefore, we take up this challenge and use the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, which according to Mazzei and McCoy ‘prompts the possibilities of new questions and different ways of thinking research’. We identify a series of drug intersectionalities between ‘traditional’ illegal drugs and NPS and through social class differences between young affluent and more socially disenfranchised drug users. This article assesses the delivery of ‘sensible drug information’ as part of a harm reduction approach, which may not always be supported by other agencies. In responding to these challenges we explore Deleuze’s ideas as a foundation for ‘sensible’ drug information which incorporates Matza?s theory of drift, to explain young people?s changing pattern of drug consumption.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• harm reduction
• risk
• young people
• ‘Just say no’
• intersectionality
• drug normalisation
• Deleuze
• NPS

Acknowledgements

We would like to thanks all drug professional practitioners who were interviewed.

Note

Disclosure statement

There is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 Intersectionality theory was developed by black feminist activist Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). Intersectionality describes a point where different positions meet or clash. Here drug intersectionality refers to different forms of philosophies and practices that inform moments of contestation within drug information between ‘traditional drugs’ and NPS, and also relate to the differences between harm reduction and abstinence approaches.