A Drug Problem?
| DOI | 10.1177/026455059604300403 |
| Date | 01 December 1996 |
| Published date | 01 December 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
194
A
Drug
Problem?
Matt
Curran,
Probation
Officer
with
Northumbria
Probation
Service,
identifies
the
conceptual
confusions
and
definitional
conflicts
surrounding
probation
work
with
drug
users.
Drawing
on
his
extensive
experience
in
Blyth,
Curran
seeks
models,
stories
and
motives
beyond
the
conventional
medical
perspective
and
suggests
alternative
ways
of
addressing
drug
users
as
people,
not
as
bad
patients.
Conflicting
descriptions
of
drug
use
govern
how
Probation
Services
deal
with
drug
users.
This
article
tnes
to
clear
up
some
conceptual
conflicts,
using
experience
gamed
over
five
years
work
in
Blyth,
where
heroin
and
methadone
injectors
typically
made
up
over
half
of
a
caseload
of
between
40
and
50
clients.
Blyth
is
a
former
shipping
and
coal
town,
outside
Newcastle
and
set
in
semi-
rural
south
Northumberland.
Fifteen
people
have
died
there
from
drug
related
causes
in
the
last
three
years.
This
paper
reflects
accounts
given
by
benefit
claimant
heroin
users
in
that
small
geographical
area,
and
some
of
the
discussion
those
accounts
produced
about
probation
practice.
Ask
elsewhere,
socially
or
geographically,
and
you
might
get
different
stories.
Medical Problems ?
The
pnme
site
for
stories
about
drug
abuse
is
a
medical
one.
Health
workers,
drug
agency
workers,
and
some
GPs,
construct
their
views
of
drug
users
around
the
physical
effects
and
health
risks
of
drug
use.
When
they
think
about
the
issues
at
all,
other
people
have
a
primary
model
of
addiction,
and
the
drug
user,
which
is
rooted
in
physiological
effects;
the
familiar
currency
of
medical
discourses.
Drug
users’
self-definitions
are
taken
from
these
medical
stones.
However,
the
medical
vision
is
far
trom
the
whole
story.
Discounting
the
Pleasure
Factor
First,
medical
models
of
what
makes
drug
users
tick
are
often
incomplete.
Otherwise
Internally
consistent,
medical
stories
often
play
down
or
under
report
the
pleasurable
aspects
of
drug
use.
Drug
workers
know
the
idea
of
a
pharmacological
holiday,
the
more
or
less
temporary
pleasant
effect
of
drug
use.
It
is
a
major
motive
in
the
lives
of
their
clients,
whether
the
drug
is
cannabis,
ecstasy
or
heroin.
However,
for
workers,
it
fades
into
insignificance
beside
the
disadvantages
of
the
regular
use
of
intoxicants.
Workers
know
that
the
sometimes
complex
and
often
dangerous
rituals
of
drug
use
are
the
main
source
clients’
health
problems.
But what
workers
can
say,
publicly,
about
drug
use
does
not
usually
include,
for
example,
recognition
for
the
’rush’,
which
core
clients
give
as
their
reason
for
undergoing
the
risks
of
street
heroin
use’.
Voicing
the
notion
that
users
get
pleasure
from
intoxicants
is
an
area
where
medical
stories
about
drug
use
stray
over
into
disputed
political
territoryz.
Reducing
the
public
health
nsks
of
intravenous
use
of
street
heroin
by
supervised
prescription
of
pharmacologically
pure
diamorphine
is
a
logical
conclusion
to
a
purely
medical
debate
about
the
ill
effects
of
adulteration
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