Summary
Contents
How do we understand drug use? How are drugs related to our social worlds? How should drug use be understood, approached and dealt with? Insightful and illuminating, this book successfully discusses drugs in social contexts. In an elegant manner, the authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. Powerful and engaging, this book discusses main questions within the field of psychoactive drugs research, such as: Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their individual involvement in drug use? This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as students and drug service practitioners in social work, social policy and nursing.
Drug Risks and Health Harms
Drug Risks and Health Harms
Drug risks refer to behaviours that are likely to produce drug-related harm. Psychoactive drugs can contribute to health harms that affect an individual's physical and psychological well-being.
Individuals assess and negotiate risk as part of everyday life. Research into various social problems, for example, teen pregnancy, poverty, school drop out and crime, has described individuals or groups who are ‘at risk’ or at ‘high risk’ for harm. Individual actions are characterised as ‘risky’, or as ‘risk behaviours’, although at times these concepts are not clearly defined. Moreover, engaging in risk taking is not the same as being ‘at risk’. Scholarly work as well as social policy has focused on risk as it applies to and affects young ...
