YOUNG MAKE DRUGS PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Britain's twentysomethings have defined their own "sensible" drug-taking
culture and incorporated a regular use of illegal substances into a work
hard/play hard lifestyle, according to research.

Far from "maturing out" of adolescent binge drinking and occasional drug
taking, these young people are helping to make recreational drug use part
of everyday life. They are also challenging assumptions that drug users are
unemployed and unemployable people who could only fund their habit through
crime.

Professor Howard Parker, director of Manchester University's social policy
applied research centre, and a research team, have monitored hundreds of
young people in northwest England since they were aged 13.

"At 18, nearly all this group said they would never touch cocaine because
it was addictive. Yet by 23, more than a quarter of them have used cocaine
powder."

Researchers said that the response of 22- to 23-year-olds indicated few
signs of moderation since they were 18. Binge drinking remained endemic. At
18, 63% of the sample had tried an illegal drug. By 23, this had risen to 76%.

Prof Parker and fellow researchers reported in the journal Sociology: "Thus
far, their drug involvement is only plateauing and at a high rate. It is
only with their increasing ten dency to become cannabis users despite
previous, more florid, drug repertoires, that these users are showing signs
of moderation."

The young people said their parents, too, were far more "realistic" and
tolerant of cannabis use than they were a few years ago.

Prof Parker explained: "What has changed is the way their substance abuse
is managed . . . Subjects reported they now exercised more self-discipline
and control over their drug use and binge drinking, by restricting it far
more to weekends.

"The sample see their substance use as de-stressing - a chilling out
activity, whereby intoxicated weekends and going out to 'get out of it' is
the antidote to the working week."