Recreational Cocaine use in Three Australian Cities

Abstract

Recreational. non-dependent cocaine users (n=73) were contacted in three Australian cities during 1986-7 using snowball sampling. They completed questionnaires on a variety of topics, were then interviewed about drug use. Compared with the general population, respondents were disproportionately young, well educated, unmarried. metropolitan, and non religious. They were 'liberal' on a variety of issues and supported fringe or 'left' political parties. Respondents showed no pattern of pathology on health and well being indicators. They scored low on institutional integration measures (family, party, church, etc) but high on informal aspects (friends, colleagues, etc). Respondents used a wide range of licit and illicit drugs and were initiated into cocaine use later than other drugs. Cocaine was principally consumed by 'snorting' and used as a 'party' drug. Users reported controlling their use, with few problems, but acknowledged the existence of dangers and usually knew someone who had experienced problems from use.There was an obvious need to produce data which would facilitate comparisons with other drug using populations as well as with 'normal' samples from the general population. To this end, data were collected through two means: a self-completed questionnaire and an open-ended in-depth interview. The questionnaire combined a series of questions routinely employed in positivistic research. These included socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, religion, education, income etc.), personality variables, social and support networks, personal relationships, well being and health and a series of attitude measures.The interview included five main sections: general patterns and history of illicit drug use, including whether, and if so how, users controlled their use of cocaine; supply and price; views on cocaine and the law; pros and cons of cocaine use; and cocaine and social contacts. Interviews were semi-structured and no topics were excised at the interview stage if the respondents felt they were relevant.The overall method of sample selection involved snowballing from initial start points (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). We had little problem in starting sampling chains, which varied in length-some were only three persons long, others up to 17. Interestingly, the best contacts for starting chains seemed to be those who fitted two characteristics2. First the connection between researcher and intermediary was a weak tie (Granovetter, 1973).

A Longitudinal Investigation of Powder Cocaine Use Among Club-Drug Using Gay and Bisexual Men

“…Use has previously been tied to social pressure (Perry and Mandell, 1995), and level of consumption has been tied to use for pleasant times with others (Waldrop et al, 2007). Although cocaine use is related to nightlife socialization, cocaine users, however, are less integrated with regard to other social institutions outside of nightlife scenes, such as family and religious communities (Mugford, 1994). This may be especially true for gay men, who experience marginalization from familial and religious structures (Herek, 2006).…”

Crack, Freebase, Stein

“…Sie zeigen, dass der kontrollierte Kokainkonsum ohne negative Konsequenzen für den Alltag im ‚bürgerlichen Milieu' eher die Regel denn die Ausnahme ist (Kolte und Schmidt-Semisch 2005, Erickson und Weber 1994Cohen und Sas 1994;Mugford 1994;Waldorf et al 1991;Robson und Bruce 1997 . So wurden abseits des vorgefertigten Bildes von Abhängigkeit und damit verbundenem gesundheitlichen und sozialen Verfall verschiedene Studien zum Kokainkonsum in sozial integrierten Personenkreisen durchgeführt.…”

Problems, needs and service provision related to stimulant use in European prisons

“…The same is true for amphetamine users (WHO, 2001). However, although there is a lack of consensus on effective interventions for stimulant users, some interventions have been found to be more effective than others (Kamieniecki et al, 1998;Rigter et al, 2004). Harm reduction campaigns targeting stimulant users are sometimes difficult to evaluate, but they seem successful, especially when members of the target group are involved in the design of the resources for the campaigns (Kamieniecki et al, 1998).…”

“…Other forms of non-pharmacological interventions have not been evaluated properly (Rigter et al, 2004).…”

“…However, in both the community and in prison there is not one homogenous subculture of cocaine users or amphetamine users. One can find various sophisticated typologies of cocaine users or amphetamine users in the international scientific literature (Cohen, 1989;Waldorf et al, 1991;Mugford, 1994;Erickson et al, 1994;Decorte & Slock, 2005).…”