Assessing the Importance of Culture in Explaining Drug Use amongst Indigenous Police Detainees in Adelaide

Abstract

This article assesses the role of the Indigenous culture of origin in explaining the early age of initiation into drug use and its relation to subsequent abuse and dependence amongst Indigenous Australians living in urban centres. In particular it is argued that ‘culture’ interacts with a range of social, internal, and environmental risk factors which thereby generate social conditions within the urban Indigenous community that tolerate and promote both the initiation into, and sustained use of illicit drugs. As such, this article also advocates that strategies that are designed to combat sustained drug use must be sensitive to, and incorporate, the traditional forms of kinship, family and care which pervade the Indigenous culture of origin.