Penetrating social worlds: conducting ethnographic research into alcohol and other drug use within Australia

Mardi Gras Says ‘Be Drug Free’: Accounting for Resistance, Pleasure and the Demand for Illicit Drugs

Focusing on the outcry which followed the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Board’s anti-drug statement of late 1992, this article explores the overwhelmingly negative reaction against Mardi Gras’ position from both health agencies and members of the gay and lesbian community. Based on an analysis of ‘Letters to the editor’ in the Sydney gay press, counter discourses and subjugated knowledges used to contest Mardi Gras’ position are identified. The significance of these counter discourses in relation to major discourses evident within drug theorizing and research is examined. This article argues that cultural and subcultural constructions of pleasure, lifestyle and health need to be considered if the demand for illicit substances is to be adequately accounted for.

'It's just a social thing': drug use, friendship and borderwork among marginalized young people

This article joins a growing chorus of researchers who doubt the utility of the concept of peer pressure for explaining young people's initiation to and use of drugs. Drawing on interview data with 45 patrons of a youth drop-in centre in Ottawa, Canada, we argue that drug use is more intricately woven into friendship - affective relationships of trust and intimacy, belonging and sharing - rather than simply part of the unidirectional pressures some young people put on others to fit in to a subculture. Marginalized young people's narratives show that drugs and alcohol furnish them with a relatively inexpensive pastime to share with friends, introducing opportunities for intimacy that are otherwise difficult to attain at the individualistic and isolating margins of neoliberal cities. We demonstrate how young drug users draw boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable relationships to drugs and alcohol, articulating an important sense of belonging to a superior group of drug users. Through this 'borderwork', they solidify the bonds they share with the people with whom they smoke cannabis and drink alcohol.