Research published this week demonstrates how illegal drugs have entered mainstream culture, with the tacit acceptance of police, politicians and economists. Britain's booming club culture actively supports and encourages the growth of illegal drug taking.
The first wide-ranging academic study of clubbers’ behaviour in a decade, published this week in the journal Criminology and Criminal Justice, indicates that thousands of apparently successful, healthy and economically active people in their twenties, thirties and forties choose to be heavy recreational drug users at the weekend.
Not only do the findings suggest almost ubiquitous drug use in and around Britain’s clubs, in particular cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy, but they point to the emergence of new substances on the pharmaceutical block, such as ketamine and GHB, being used increasingly by clubbers as part of assorted drug “repertoires” at the weekends.
Dr Fiona Measham and Dr Karenza Moore, criminologists from Lancaster University, set out to explore the hidden world of pharmaceutical intoxication in Britain’s bars and night clubs. What they found, in the most thorough examination ever undertaken of drugs across the British night-time economy, was extraordinary:
almost all Britain’s thousands of clubbers routinely take drugs, in particular cocaine (tried by 83 per cent of people), cannabis (93 per cent) and ecstasy (85 per cent).
eight in ten clubbers had taken a drug within the previous month, and nearly two in three of those questioned had taken, or were going to take, drugs on the night they were surveyed.
much of Britain’s burgeoning night-time economy, worth as much as £30 billion, and employing about one million people, is inextricably linked to the night-long consumption of illegal drugs.
the trend is such that the main clubbing nights have been moved from Saturdays to Fridays specifically to allow people to recover in time for work or lectures on Monday morning.
Read the rest of this article from The Times here
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6879862.ece
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