Drugs in Adolescent Worlds

• NCJ Number: 235703
• Author(s): Barry Glassner, Julia Loughlin
• Date Published: January 1987
• Length: 311 pages
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored

Annotation

This book examined the ways in which drug use is a part of the adolescent social world.

Abstract

The focus of this research is on adolescents’ perceptions of drug availability, effects and appropriate contexts for their use, and the consequences of these perceptions. Chapter 1 includes definitions of drugs and their use and a review of the epidemiological and political traditions of research on drugs. Chapter 2 describes the methodology of how the adolescents were chosen and interviewed, the management of the data, the process used in selecting excerpts from the interviews, and how to evaluate adolescents’ assertions about their lives. Chapter 3 examines how adolescent drug-taking is a by-product of boredom and depression, techniques for controlling one’s drug use and setting up thresholds for drug-taking, and the integration of drug-taking into everyday life. Chapter 4 is an analysis of the events reported by the subjects in which drug use occurred. Chapter 5 reviews adolescents’ knowledge and beliefs about drug use and describes how they obtain the drugs they use. Chapter 6 examines those who do not use drugs, or who use them infrequently or with caution and why. Chapter 7 explores peer pressure and how it affects adolescent drug use. Chapter 8 provides dialogue of adolescents discussing their relationships with their parents. Chapter 9 explores adolescents’ perceptions of the adult world, their definitions of adult behavior, and their expectations about their own future lives. Chapter 10 discusses the research traditions and provides reinterpretation and integration analysis of these traditions. Chapter 11 analyses the relationship between deviants who engage in activities which are classified by the society as illegal and those who try drugs as they become available within their social world. Appendix, bibliography, general and subject indexes