Exploring the micro-politics of normalisation: Narratives of pleasure, self-control and desire in a sample of young Australian ‘party drug’ users

Problems with the Identification of ‘Problematic' Cannabis Use: Examining the Issues of Frequency, Quantity, and Drug Use Environment

“…The cultural normalization of cannabis exemplified by these developments has had profound effects, we would argue, on how people use and relate to cannabis. Pennay and Moore [83] developed this argument further by describing how the settings and contexts in which drugs are used interact with broader processes of cultural normalization to determine whether and in what ways normalization is experienced by individual users. Our own research on long-term cannabis users [26,80,81] has clearly documented that consumption is shaped by a sensitivity to the individual use environment which helps to determine where, when, and with whom use is appropriate and, more importantly, unsuitable.…”

The normalisation thesis – 20 years later

“…Some of this work has supported the normalisation thesis or at least elements of it (Bahora, Sterk, & Elifson, 2009;Newcombe, 2007;Taylor, 2000), some has argued that normalised drug use is limited to particular sections of the population (Duff, 2003(Duff, , 2005Holt, 2005;Hutton, 2010;Pearson, 2001), and some has contested it (Blackman, 2007;Gourley, 2004;Shildrick, 2002;Shiner & Newburn, 1997). Further work has focused on differentiated normalisation and reasserted the significance of social class and gender (MacDonald & Marsh, 2002;Measham, 2002;Shildrick, Simpson, & MacDonald, 2007); as well as on the micro-politics of normalisation (Hathaway, Comeau, & Erickson, 2011;Pennay & Moore, 2010;Rodner Sznitman, 2008) and the tensions between agency and structure in drug careers (Measham & Shiner, 2009).…”

“PMA Sounds Fun”: Negotiating Drug Discourses Online

“…can be understood as demonstrative of transformational normalisation, as shown by Pennay and Moore (2010), where network members in Pennay's ethnography described "drug intoxication as legitimate desire and pleasurable experience to be pursued enthusiastically" (p.…”

“…The place of pleasure in harm reduction and public health discourses has been critically examined by numerous scholars (e.g., Duff, 2008;Keane, 2009;Race, 2009) and there have been calls for researchers to account for drug users who privilege pleasure in their drug practices (e.g., Dwyer, 2008;MacLean, 2008;Moore, 2010;Pennay & Moore, 2010). As Race has noted, "pleasure is not the antithesis of self-regulation and safety, but the medium through which certain shared protocols of safety take shape" (2008, p. 421).…”

“…Race (2009) describes counterpublic health as peer-based actions that accept that drugs are used for pleasure and that pleasure-seeking can be done more safely. A question we should consider is how can 'health resistant' people be reached by public health campaigns (see also Pennay & Moore, 2010)? Is this even possible, given the fundamental premise of public health is that health should be more important than anything, including pleasurable intoxication?…”