NORMAL DRUG USE: ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK AMONG AN ADULT NETWORK OF RECREATIONAL DRUG USERS IN INNER LONDON

Abstract

A key debate in late 1990s Britain is the “normalization” of illicit drug use among young people. This qualitative research study explores recreational drug use (mainly cannabis and cocaine) among an adult friendship network in an inner London neighborhood. It finds that the use of these drugs is accepted as a normal and routine aspect of daily life. In addition to patterns of drug consumption and drug dealing, some aspects of risk perception are also described. Adults are neglected in current UK drug policy debates. “Normal” adult recreational drug use poses the need for a new public health policy agenda for the new century. [Translations are provided in the International Abstracts Section of this issue.]

• Recreational drug use
• Normalization
• Cannabis
• Cocaine
• Ethnography

Notes

^*See, for example, the way in which the pub is a focus for disproportionate amounts of conversation and social interaction in the two most popular British television “soap operas,” Coronation Street and East Enders. Given that the pub is such a major social institution in Britain, however, it is odd that it has been so little researched. From the late 1930s we have the Mass Observation study, The Pub and the People, which was based in the northern industrial town of Bolton, together with a later follow-up study 16-17. The pub is also mentioned in passing in studies of working class communities 18-19. For a useful and insightful anthropological study of various aspects of small-town village pub culture [see 20-22].

^*A note on the use of “argot” and slang might be helpful for readers not familiar with London, and more generally British drug terms 23-25. The word “puff” for cannabis can be used as both a noun and as a verb: e.g., “he was selling puff;” “I was puffing with some friends;” “we were having a puff;” “everyone there was puffing up.” Cannabis is also known as “dope,” and sometimes as “draw” or “blow.” A cannabis cigarette is known as a “joint” or “spliff,” but never as a “reefer.” “Spliff” can also be used as a verb: “They were spliffing up;” “I went round to his house, he'd already spliffed up.” To make a “joint” is however most often described as “rolling a joint,” as well as “spliff up” the verb “to skin up” is also used, deriving from “skin” as slang for a cigarette paper. Cannabis was most commonly found in its resin (“hash”) form, and less commonly in its herbal form (“grass” or “weed”). Various terms are also often used to distinguish different forms of cannabis resin—“rocky,” “black,” and “slate.” “Rocky” refers to the place of origin, Morocco; “black” designates both appearance and origin as in “Pakistani black;” and “slate” describes the appearance of a form of cannabis resin in thin slabs.

The use of “argot” in London is much complicated by the form of dialect speech known as “rhyming slang,” a playful idiom that exists in both traditional and improvised forms (26,27; see footnote on p. 184). I have tried to avoid an unnecessary reliance on such speech forms in the text, using more easily understood substitute words wherever possible. The common use of argot and rhyming slang among the networks described here is best understood in the way Polsky (24, p. 106) explains it: not as a means to enforce secrecy, but as a way of expressing friendship, group loyalty, and belonging-ness. Two studies of US drug argot that I have found useful are Mieczkowski 28-29.

^*A common London practice where men's names contain the letter “r” is for this to be replaced with an “l” as a form of friendly diminutive. Thus, Gary becomes “Gal,” Terry becomes “Tel,” Derek become “Del,” and Jerry becomes “Jel.” I have also very occasionally heard this used with women's names, so that Mary becomes “Mal.” As a result of mass media influences, this “Cockney” naming device has become more widely known in Britain, although I do not know whether the actual usage has spread beyond London.

^*Partridge (26, p. 804) claims that the word “charley” for cocaine has been in use since the 1920s. Although “coke” was sometimes used, “charley” was by the far the dominant term in a limited argot. In this network the method of use was always nasal inhalation—“snorted” or “sniffed,” sometimes playfully referred to as “powdering your nose.” Although “crack” cocaine, more commonly known as “rock” cocaine, was known its use was disapproved of and people did not smoke “rocks.”

^*There was a joke in circulation that embodies this culture of sharing and reciprocity, and indicates retribution for transgressions. Whether or not the story is true is irrelevant; the function of the joke is to affirm solidarity. The joke is told as follows. “There's this geezer, Jack, always short when it come to the charley. One of his mates Ken, he puts a line of poly-filla in the gents, Says to Jack “There's one in there for you my old son.” Jack goes to the toilet and comes out, sniffing, rubbing his nose. “Alright?” says Ken, “Yeh, sweet” says Jack. “Then don't get a nose bleed,” says Ken, “or it might set.”

^*As indicated in footnote on page 174. I have “cleansed” many instances of reported speech of complex argot and general slang. Rudey is offered as an exemplar of intricate, but nevertheless commonplace, celebrations of these speech forms. “Pukker,” meaning genuine or reliable, derives from colonial Anglo-Indian pukka as early as the 1770s according to Partridge (27, p. 731), and is still in common use. “Snide” can be traced to mid-19th century “underworld” argot as meaning counterfeit money (26, p. 653) and its current and frequent usage implies more generally something fake or bogus. “Duck and dive” is obscure, but again entirely common, possibly from 19th century pickpocket argot and now meaning someone who lives by their wits in an entrepreneurial fashion, a survivor. “Flash” has numerous connotations with “underworld” life since the late 1600s (26, p. 249) but has now settled down to refer to an ostentatious or brazen appearance or lifestyle. “Jekyll” or “jekylled” is a different term for “snide”—derived from “Jekyll and Hyde” in the playful traditions of rhyming slang—which Partridge (26, p. 835) locates as early as 1910, describing it as a “neat pun” on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel. Rhyming slang is always at its most inventive and mischievous when the word which rhymes (in this case “Hyde” for “snide”) is dropped. Other examples of this omitted speech would be “Use your loaf,” meaning “Be sensible” or “Use your head,” where “loaf” is a nonrhyming referent for “loaf of bread,” i.e. “head;” the use of “bottle” for the number two (“bottle of glue”); “cockle” for ten (“cock and hen”); and in a more locally improvised version, “Lambeth” for the chalk used on pool cues (Lambeth Walk from the song “Doing the Lambeth Walk,” which is an old London Music Hall favorite.)

The possibilities within this slang speech form are commonly exploited. Thus, where cannabis is concerned one finds “Bob Hope” for “dope,” and a boxing promoter “Micky Duff” for “puff.” When newspapers reported in December 1997 that the son of the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, had been found dealing a small amount of cannabis, within days some local comedians had exploited the rhyme with the slang term “draw” and were referring to cannabis as “Jack Straw.”

^*Similar debates on the relative harms of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis have opened in other parts of Europe, notably in France where widespread press coverage greeted the appearance of a report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health [55]. See, for example, the front-page headline in Le Monde (17 June 1998): “According to Experts, Alcohol is a Drug As Dangerous as Cocaine and Heroin … Cannabis Judged Less Harmful than Tobacco;” or Le Figaro (17 June 1998): “A Report Proposes a New Classification … The Distinction between Licit or Illicit Substances has No Scientific Basis. Cannabis Comes Lowest if One Consideres Individual and Social Risks.”