Drugs and Youth Cultures: Is Australia Experiencing the ‘Normalization’ of Adolescent Drug Use?

This paper explores recent shifts in the meaning and culture of adolescent drug use, contrasting developments in the United Kingdom and Australia. Of particular interest will be the claim that drug use has become a normal feature of young people's life-experience. The paper draws upon Howard Parker's ‘normalization thesis’, arguing that Parker's approach has some value in accounting for the changing nature of adolescent drug use in Australia. Available epidemiological evidence indicates that young people's consumption of illicit substances has risen dramatically in Australia in the past decade, although not at quite the rates recorded in the United Kingdom. The paper also draws upon contemporary debates in sociology and cultural studies in an attempt to explain these shifts in adolescent drug use. I conclude that greater attention to consumption and identity formation within youth cultures offers important new ways of understanding recent changes in the culture and meaning of drug use for young people.