Families Youths and Contemporary Society

Hilary Term Assignment

Paula Mayock
Youths and Contemporary Society
Leah Brady
12313094
Sociology and Social Policy
Word count: 2,726
Signed: Leah Brady

Discuss the utility and critiques of the drug normalisation thesisthe claim that drug consumption has become more conventional
and assimilated into the lives of young people- put forward by
Parker and colleagues.

This essay will be focusing on drug use among the youths of modern society. Its main focus
will be on the normalisation thesis put forward by Parker et al. In order to fully understand
this however, this essay will firstly look at the concepts of youths in general asking the
question, what does youth actually mean? before attempting to critically examine the
normalisation theory.
Afterwards, I will attempt to discuss the normalisation theory in detail. In doing this I will
draw on arguments brought forward by Parker et al, in which I will give examples of each
argument and why it is relevant to youth culture today. Subsequently I will investigate both
the advantages and disadvantages of this thesis. I will do this by studying the work of other
theorists in this field and their takes on the normalisation theory.
When this is done I hope to have a better understanding of drug use among youths in
contemporary society.
In order to fully understand the processes associated with young people and the youth of
society, it is firstly important to examine what is actually meant by youth and ask the
question, what is youth?
According to Furlong, it is essentially a period of semi-dependence that falls between the
full dependency that characterizes childhood and the independence of adulthood (Furlong,
2013:3). It is essentially an in between period that could be longer or shorter depending on
the society you live by, or in. Take Ireland for example. You can be held criminally

responsible for your actions from the age of twelve, which may suggest that by the age of
twelve a child or young person is fully aware and knows what he or she is doing, but cannot
vote or consume alcohol legally until the age of eighteen. These legal landmarks will vary
depending on the society you live in and in USA for example the drinking age is twenty-one.
What someone defines as youth may be dependent on what landmark they have to reach
before they are no longer in this category.
The United Nations defines youth as persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years and all
UN statistics are based on this definition. This is a better definition as we have a specific time
period and are no longer making guesses as to what makes someone a youth. Taking this
into consideration, it is now possible to investigate in detail the use of drugs among the
youth in todays society.
It is no secret that young people have become more open and free about drug use. It is not
really taboo anymore to consume drugs from cannabis to ecstasy to cocaine; youths of
todays society are experimenting more openly with drugs. One reason for this may be down
to the portrayal of drug use in the media. Huge celebrities are openly using drugs such as
cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine; posting pictures on social media and singing songs about how
good these drugs are and how much they enjoy consuming said drugs. It is no wonder people
and youths in particular are becoming more and more open about drug use and drug culture is
becoming assimilated into the lives of young people.
Take Miley Cyrus for example. She is a celebrity who youths of this generation may have
grown up around. She was an ordinary celebrity and looked no different to most teenage girls
of this generation and all of a sudden, she is openly using recreational drugs and no one is
shunning her or doing anything about it because ordinary youths of todays society are okay
with this.

This essay is not trying to say that drug culture and the consumption of drugs has happened
out of the blue and people are accepting it. It has always been around. The difference is now
ordinary youths are partaking in the consumption of drugs. It is no longer tied to certain
subcultures. Parker et al states, from speeding mods in the sixties, to tripping hippies in
the seventies, through to a new age of heroin users during the 1980s, all these scenes
involved atypical minority populations. (Parker et al 1998:1). Moving into the 90s as stated
above has seen the emergence of something different. The use of drugs among ordinary
everyday youths of society, not necessarily part of a subculture; youths from all different
backgrounds with completely different hobbies and interests are doing the same type of
drugs.
Does this mean that drug consumption has become normalised and assimilated into the lives
of young people?
Consider the recent shift, over the past twenty or so years, which has taken drugs and drug
use from marginal subcultures into the situation where they are widely sampled and used in
late modern consumer culture something profound has happened in in relation to the place
of drugs in everyday life since the mid-1980s
(South, 1999)
Normalization may be defined simply as; when an action or process or idea of some sort
starts to be viewed as normal in a society. For example in Ireland, in todays society, it has
become normal for same-sex couples to be in legitimate relationships and to marry and start
families, like any other couple where the people involved are of the opposite sex. In the past
in Ireland, society would have viewed this as wrong and often deviant behaviour, but in
todays society same-sex relationships are taken for granted and seen as a normal occurrence.

Parker and colleagues in their research on illicit drug use among young people put forward
the normalization thesis. It makes a claim that drug consumption has become conventional
and assimilated into the lives of young people and in simpler terms, become normal.
Parker et al (1998:151-157) make six major arguments in this theory in relation to the
normalization of drug with todays youth. One of these arguments is that drugs are more
available. This is one of the most basic reasons as to why drug consumption among youths is
becoming more and more normal. There is quite simply just more drugs around. They are
easier to get your hands on and young people know how to get them.
With the new generation becoming more and more technologically advanced, there are more
and more ways emerging for them to buy and sell drugs. This can be done through Facebook,
Instagram and a range of other social media sites. Nearly all youths in todays society own a
smart phone or some sort of phone which means it is progressively getting less difficult to get
in contact with someone to buy drugs from. A simple text or phone call will suffice and the
drugs of choice become available. There are also websites which you can browse online and
buy drugs from straight to your door. You no longer even have to leave the house to buy the
drugs you are after. Ireland is now part of Europe which means people can move freely from
country to country within Europe and with people being able to move around with greater
ease, drugs can too. There is a lot less effort involved for the youth of today which may be a
leading factor as to why the normalization of drug use is occurring and when there is high
demand for something, regardless of what the product is, the supply is sure to follow.
Another aspect of Parker et als 1998 argument is that with the popularity of drug use
increasing there is a narrowing of difference between drug users. Youths using drugs as we
seen earlier, are from all walks of life and not necessarily tied to a certain social class or
social group. There are no factors which may indicate that these youths are different such as

clothing type or music they like as there may have been with the mods of the 60s or the
hippies of the 70s. This normalization may be occurring because ordinary people are seeing
it as a normal part of their culture and taking advantage of the reduction in stigma around the
use of recreational drugs.
The next one of Parker et als main argument is that young people make cost benefit
decisions concerning drug use. They also argue that young people are drug wise and open
minded about future drug use (Parker et al 1998:151-157). The youth of today are so much
more knowledgeable about what they are doing. They are able to google risks involved in
taking their drug of choice and come to a conclusion as to whether or not the benefit of taking
the drug outweighs the cost. Youths can go online and see exactly how the drug will affect
them and with more people partaking in recreational drug use there is increased levels of
information out there for youths. It is a completely different situation to the 1980s heroin
trend. This was a certain type of person or youth, part of a certain subculture engaging in this
trend and taking this drug. Ordinary people had no information of the drug. Not to the extent
that we do now and it is certain that very few users if any at all knew how devastating the
effects would be for them as they had nowhere to look for information.
Youths of today are taking drugs such as ecstasy which they are taking in moderation and for
recreational purposes. Although this cannot be said for all young people and there are young
people who become addicted to drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine. However it is
unlikely that every single youth who partakes in illicit recreational drug use will become an
addict and begin to abuse drugs, just as not every young person who consumes alcohol or
binge-drinks will become an alcoholic.
In investigating this topic, one website in particular stood out. www.pillreports.net. This is a
website where people can go to gather information about pills they are thinking about taking.

On this website there are in-depth reviews of ecstasy tablets that other people have taken. By
using this website young people are making a decision whether or not the risks associated
with their pill of choice is worth the high it will give them. Because of these reasons drug use
is becoming more conventional and assimilated into the lives of young people.
One of the last main arguments put forward by Parker et al in relation to this thesis is that
drug use is increasingly accommodated in broader society, particularly through mass media
(Parker et al 1998:151-157). As we saw earlier one reason for drug normalization is the
media. Celebrities are taking drugs and not being labelled as deviant or being made to
apologise for their actions. There is a huge cannabis culture among celebrities and with
cannabis being made legal in a number of countries, smoking the drug is becoming less and
less of a deviant act and no longer being seen as something that should be frowned upon.
With easy access to the internet most, if not all young people, can now see how other
societies live and are not necessarily tied down to behave in a certain way. It is easier for
young people now to view the world and how others do things. They can choose how they
want to live and behave and are not seen as being as deviant or wrong for doing so as they
may have been this time thirty years ago. This cohort of young people demonstrates high
levels of drug knowledge which would have been unthinkable a decade ago. (Parker et al
1998).
Although the normalization theory has many valid points and explanations as to why drug
consumption is becoming more conventional and assimilated into the lives of young people,
not everyone is in agreement of this. One theorist who argues against the normalization
theory in a sense is Shildrick T. In an article on illicit drug use Shildrick highlights how
overly simple Parker and colleagues normalization theory is. This paper critically examines
normalization theory and draws attention to weaknesses on both an empirical and a

theoretical level. It is suggested in this paper that, as it stands, normalization theory presents
an overly simplistic account of young peoples drug use (Shildrick. T 2002:35).
Although there is disagreement from Shildrick, there is no dispute in the fact that drug use is
becoming increasingly common among youths and as we have seen already that a greater
amount of young people are taking part in the consumption of drugs. Within Europe, the
numbers using amphetamines and cannabis continues to rise as these drugs become a more
integrated and accepted aspect of mainstream youth culture. (Shildrick. T, 2022:36). In this
article Shildrick goes on to talk about the 1980s rave trend and how significant this era was
in that it was probably the first time that the participation in the use of drugs moved from
being mainly associated with subcultural groups and minorities into mainstream youth
culture. This could be what is happening today. Drugs are becoming more of a mainstream
part of youth culture rather than something done by a few minority groups in society. It was
suggested that, for the first time, subculture had moved from the marginal to the mainstream
with a larger number of young people being involved in this culture than ever before
(Shildrick. T, 2002:37). Although both theories agree on certain things like drugs being more
readily available now than ever before, so a growing number of young people are
experimenting in drugs, Shildrick believes that the problem with the theory of normalization
put forward by Parker et al is that it almost seems as though young people do not see drug use
as being a problem anymore and is sceptical of this as, in fact, if you were to ask young
people about the use of drugs, there are quite a few who would agree that it is still a problem
in todays society. In view of the fact that most young people possess negative attitudes
towards drugs. Ramsay and Partridge are also sceptical of any suggestion of full blown
normalisation. (Ramsey and Partridge, 1999, p. 57 in Shildrick. T, 2002:38). It is for this
reason, along with a number of others, that Shildrick believes that there should be a
differentiated normalization, where certain types of drugs may be seen as normal for certain

types of people but not for others. Shiner and Newburn 1999 also had similar critiques to
those of Shildrick in that the acceptability of drug taking among youths is exaggerated in
Parker et als theory and that as stated previous, people still have room for concern regarding
illicit drug taking. .
According to Shiner and Newburn the normalisation thesis (as it was then presented)
exaggerated the extent and acceptability of drug use among young people; paid insufficient
attention to the normative context within which drugs were used and to the continued
concerns that young people expressed about illicit drug use; and overstated the extent and
pace of change.
(Shiner and Burn in Measham, F. & Shiner, M. 2009)
In light of both arguments, it is clear to me that whether one is to take the full blown
normalization theory put forward by Parker et al, which claims that drug consumption has
become more conventional and assimilated into the lives of young people or the differential
normalization theory suggested by Shildrick, the fact is that drug consumption is becoming
more and more common among young people in Ireland, and around the world today, for
many reasons such as the ones visited above. Whether it is the fact that they are more readily
available, that people and youths in general are more knowledgeable about drugs or it may be
that the media is portraying a different image of drug consumption than images portrayed in
the past. It may be safe to say that recreational drug use has become a part of ordinary youth
culture and although drug use and deviance have always been linked to youth culture, the fact
that it is no longer linked to sub-cultures within youth culture is something that is extremely
interesting for researchers and society as a whole.

Bibliography

Furlong, A. (2013) Youth Studies: An Introduction. London: Rougledge.

Measham, F. & Shiner, M. (2009) The legacy of normalisation: The role of classical
and contemporary criminological theory in understanding young peoples drug use.

International Journal of Drug Policy, 20, 502-508.

Parker, H., Measham, F. & Aldridge, A. (1998) Illegal Leisure: The Normalization of

Adolescent Recreational Drug Use. London: Routledge.

Sheldrick, T. (2002) Young people, illicit drug use and the question of normalization.

Journal of Youth Studies, 5, 1, 35-48.

South, N. (1999) Debating drugs and everyday life: normalisation, prohibition and
otherness. In N. South (Ed) Drugs: Cultures, Controls and Everyday Life. London:
Sage. pp. 1-15.