The importance of culture and context: rethinking risk and risk management in young drug using populations

Abstract

This paper explores the place of risk and risk management within contemporary Australian drug policy debates, focusing on the Howard Government's Tough on Drugs strategy. In exploring the conceptual bases of this strategy, this paper suggests that the characterisations of risk discernible in Australian debates have been dominated by a narrow group of ‘expert’ discourses leading to a range of gaps and omissions in the development of drugs policies. Furthermore the paper suggests that such omissions have significant implications for the development of harm reduction strategies within young drug using populations in Australia and elsewhere. In developing these arguments, the paper draws upon the work of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. Of particular interest is Beck's account of the tension between ‘expert’ and ‘non-expert’ risk assessments within contemporary risk management debates. In privileging more ‘expert’ risk knowledges, this paper suggests that Australian drug policies have ignored the range of ‘non-expert’ risk management strategies that exist within young drug using populations, and concludes that this ignorance of the culture and the context of young people's drug use further undermines the efficacy of health promotion efforts within these populations.

Keywords:

• risk
• risk management
• drugs
• young people
• identity
• lived experience

Notes

For a summary of the key features of harm minimization and zero tolerance approaches to drugs policy see Fitzgerald and Sewards (2002: pp. 12 – 15), and/or McKey (1998: pp. 12 – 14).

Carroll included in this category all individuals in his sample who had used any illicit substance at least once in the 12 months prior to the research.