Perceptions of Legitimacy and Strategies of Resistance: Melbourne Illicit Drug Users and Random Roadside Drug Testing

Abstract

In 2004 Victoria, Australia became the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce Random Roadside Drug Testing (RRDT). This article engages with the concepts of legitimacy (Joh 2007) and resistance (Marx 1995, 2003) to explore a sample group of Melbourne illicit drug users' perceptions of RRDT and their self-reported strategies to circumvent it. Forty participants took part in semi-structured interviews and self-report surveys. ¹ Participants were recruited via snowball sampling of networks known to the researcher and opportunistic sampling at a local drug and alcohol recovery clinic. Participants largely supported RRDT to encourage general road safety. However, many participants did not perceive RRDT as having complete legitimacy, continued their drug driving behaviour and used strategies to evade RRDT. This article contributes new knowledge to existing drug driving literature. It encourages further qualitative drug driving research be conducted to gain greater understanding of the social and cultural context in which drug driving occurs.