Young people and intoxication: illegal drugs, alcohol and legal highs

Abstract

This chapter argues that commercialisation and criminalisation are at the centre of the demonisation of young people in the United Kingdom through the ‘moral panic matrix’. The theoretical basis derives from Stan Cohen’s (1972) study Folk Devils and Moral Panics. For Cohen, government statements and media attention can combine so that moral panic successfully captures demonised youth and each successive folk devil gets publicly paraded. Furthermore, McRobbie and Thornton (1995: 560) argue that the tabloid media now create moral panics; stating moral panics were ‘once the unintended outcome of journalistic practice, seem to have become a goal’. The chapter will assess the facts relating to young people’s use of illegal drugs, alcohol and legal highs. The aim will be to examine two different approaches that have shaped the debate on youth and intoxication, first looking at functionalist theory, the concept of risk and the new science of prevention, and, second, critically assessing the interpretative approach of the normalisation of intoxicants.