DRUG OFFENDERS AND CRIMINAL-JUSTICE - CAREERS, COMPULSION, COMMITMENT AND PENALTY

In the light of recent shifts in the availability of illicit drugs to, and use by, young people in the UK the article argues that current drug policy in the criminal justice system, which is fashioned around a model of problem or dependent use, is increasingly irrelevant as a diversionary (from punishment) mechanism. It is further suggested that many users of the key drug of the 1980s, heroin, have routinely eluded various ''realistic'' therapeutic/rehabilitative interventions because the model of problem or dependent use was refused by them, or, they were, in tum, refused by it. Despite the treatment ambitions of the ''British System'' of drug control, those seeking illicit pleasures and getting in trouble with the law have largely been subject to traditional judicial penalties. Finally, a re-incorporation of drug studies within general criminology and (youth) cultural studies is put forward.