Macro Social Flaws and Intervention's Unfinished Business: A Personal Note on Young People's Drug Use in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper traces how social, economic, and cultural changes in Hong Kong in the past five decades might have affected the pattern of illicit drug use among young people in Hong Kong. The prevalence of illicit drug use by young people had been very low before the 1990s, and like adult users, young users mostly used heroin. This pattern of drug use started to change in the late 1990s, when there was a sudden upsurge of drug use among young people, and psychoactive drugs such as ketamine quickly replaced heroin as the most popular drugs among them. An attempt is made to explain the new pattern of young people's drug use with respect to the changes of the social, economic and cultural conditions of Hong Kong since the 1960s, making use of Beck's risk society perspective and Parker's concept of normalization of recreational drug use. The identification of macro social flaws points to the need to address societal factors impeding successful interventions, which will involve reducing the blockage of upward mobility for young people, and providing them with the latest scientific knowledge of the physical and mental damages of ketamine and other psychoactive drugs for their better understanding of the risk of drug use.

Keywords:

• psychoactive drug use
• ketamine
• risk society
• normalization ofrecreational drug use
• Hong Kong

GLOSSARY

• Bad habitization: The reduction of a serious problem behavior to a bad habit. In this paper, misuse of ketamine was perceived as only a bad habit, thereby undermining the user's awareness of the danger of ketamine misuse.

• Enlightened prohibition: A drug policy that is basically prohibitionist in approach but encourages and incorporates programs and services in the areas of rehabilitation and prevention.

• Neutralization: A process whereby a law abiding person justifies his/her involvement in delinquent behavior by redefining the nature of the delinquent behavior or shift the responsibilities to other individuals or groups. In this paper, young people justify their use of ketamine by defining it as a soft drug that is much less addictive and harmful than heroin.

• Normalization: A process whereby an act considered as deviant in the past becomes more and more acceptable and widely practiced nowadays. In this paper, young people are now more permissive and committed to the recreational use of drugs than their counterpart in the older generation. The normalization of recreational drug use has occurred in many societies,including Hong Kong.

• Psychoactive drugs: A broad term that describes any drug that is mood-altering.

• Risk society: A new stage of social development in the post-industrial period characterized by a process of individualization whereby individuals have to calculate and handle risks in everyday lives by themselves rather than relying on social institutions in preventing and managing risks.

Notes

¹The “Four Little Dragons” refers to Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. During the 1960s and 1990s, the economies of these places experienced rapid industrialization and high economic growth, and were models for many developing countries to follow.

² The Gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality within a population. It ranges from 0 to 1. In a hypothetical situation of G = 1, a single person receives 100% of the total income, representing the most unequal society. In the most equal society, every person receives the same percentage of the total income (G = 0). The higher the Gini coefficient, the more unequal the distribution of income or wealth in the society.

³ The reader is referred to Vuchinich and Heather (2003) and Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky (1983) for stimulating analyses about human choice, judgment, and decision-making. Editor's note

⁴ The reader is asked to consider that psychoactive substances have been available since the development of mankind, beginning with the process of natural fermentation, millennia prior to man-made "drugs," within a societal framework of: For whom is it permitted… For whom is it forbidden… For whom is it an obligation… For whom is it a choice… For whom is it a need… See McGovern (2009), McGovern and Mondavi (2007), and Porter and Teich (1997).

⁵ The Beat Drugs Fund was established by the government in 1996 to provide financial support to worthwhile projects in drug prevention, treatment, and research proposed by community organizations.

⁶ The reader is referred to the thesis by Rittel and Webber (1973), who posited that problems can and should be usefully categorized into two types: tame problems and wicked problems. The former are solved in a linear, traditionally known and tried "water fall paradigm": gather data, analyze data, formulate solution, and implement solution. The latter "wicked problems" can only be responded to individually, each time anew, with no ultimate and repeatable solution. From their perspective, the misuse of "drugs" is a "wicked problem." The reader is also referred to the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster who posited that there are two types of questions: legitimate and illegitimate. The former are those for which the answer is not known and is, perhaps, even unknowable during a given state of knowledge and technology. The effective and sustained control of man's “appetite” for a range of psychoactive substances, whatever their legal as well as social status has yet to be achieved historically anywhere. An illegitimate question is the one for which the answer is known, or at the very least consensualized. The asking of illegitimate questions has been, and remains, by and large, the acculturated norm (von Foerster, Mora, & Amiot, 1960). The reader is also referred to Neruda's book (2001) for a poetic exploration of legitimate questions. Editor's note

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuet W. Cheung

Yuet W. Cheung, PhD, Hong Kong, is professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His areas of specialization are crime and deviance, drug policy, and sociology of health. Besides teaching in CUHK, he had also worked as a research scientist in the Addiction Research Foundation (now part of the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health) in Toronto, Canada from 1988 to 1992. In the past 15 years, Prof. Cheung has conducted extensive research on substance misuse and drug policy in Hong Kong, including two pioneer longitudinal studies of chronic heroin addicts and young psychoactive drug users. Besides conducting research and actively publishing on topics related to drug policy and social problems, Prof. Cheung has been actively involved in the work of drug treatment, prevention, and research in Hong Kong. He has been awarded the Medal of Honor and appointed Justice of the Peace by the Government of the Hong Kong SAR.