The substance of youth - the place of drugs in young people's lives today

By Perri 6, Ben Jupp, Helen Perry and Kristen Lasky, November 1997

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for providing valuable support for this project. Valuable advice, contacts, and direction were provided by the members of the project Advisory Group. All were members of the group in a personal capacity, not representing their institutions:

Dr John Balding, Schools Health Education Unit; Professor Philip Bean, University of Loughborough; Adele Blakeborough, Kaleidoscope; Professor John Booth Davies, University of Strathclyde; Dr Marian Fitzgerald, Home Office; Roger Howard, Standing Conference on Drug Abuse; Dr Janet Keene, University of East Anglia; Dr John Strang, National Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence; and Pat Kneen of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who chaired the group.

Our principle debt is to the respondents who gave generously of their time and were willing to relate quite intimate details of their lives to strangers.

We are particularly grateful to Pat Dade of Synergy Consulting for the provision of data, for conducting additional analyses for us, and for advice on data interpretation.

Mark Gilman of Lifeline, Dr John Strang of the National Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence, Professor Mike Hough of South Bank University, Dr Niall Coggans of Strathclyde University and Dr Janet Keene of the University Of East Anglia all came to Demos to give seminars. Nicholas Saunders, John Cairncross and Malcolm Ramsay all gave generously of their time in interviews and subsequent contacts. In addition, we received valuable help from Tracey Tasker at the Health Education Authority, Mary Anna Wright of City University and also from Andrew Ashenhurst, who gave advice on the anthropology of drug use.

We are grateful to Janet Dewes of MORI Field and Tab who organised the recruitment of many of the non-user and recreational user respondents. For their assistance in recruiting problem users in their areas, we are grateful to Adele Blakeborough of Kaleidoscope in Kingston upon Thames, Claire Dowgill at Bramley Community Centre in Leeds, Finuala Daly at New Start in Wythenshawe, Chris Hughes at NHS Drug Services in Brighton, and to all the other staff at these centres for their assistance during the fieldwork.

Ivan Briscoe conducted the initial literature review research and worked on the early stages of the research design. Nick Banner and Rachel Gough carried out literature reviews for us in the early stages of the project. Matthew Creasy assisted with copy editing, editing graphs and references. Geoff Mulgan gave us a constant stream of ideas, comments, suggestions, contacts and encouragement.

None of the above should necessarily be associated with our opinions, errors or policy recommendations.

About the authors
Perri 6 is Director of Policy at Demos; Ben Jupp and Helen Perry are Senior Researchers at Demos; Kristen Lasky is a former Researcher at Demos, now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Demos is an independent, cross-party think-tank based in London.