Jason Ditton

Cocaine Careers in a Sample of Scottish Users

People who had used cocaine within the past three years were interviewed in Scotland. Most of the 133 also used other drugs and endorsed more positive than negative cocaine effects. Some 59 of them had at some time used cocaine more than once a week for a period of some months, when as much as 30 “lines” of cocaine were used per day of cocaine use. A sub-group of 28 of the 59 were polydrug users who used opiates, these polydrug users used the largest quantities of cocaine, most often, during their heavy use period and reported most problems with cocaine use. They were also most likely to be unemployed or have low incomes. Nonetheless, both polydrug and heavy users had reduced their cocaine use to relatively low current levels. The implications of these findings for the nature of cocaine dependence and cocaine problems are discussed.

Scottish cocaine users : wealthy snorters or delinquent smokers ?

Ninety-two cocaine users were interviewed in Scotland. Most were middle-class nasal users, also used other drugs and generally gave cocaine a positive rating. One half of them had at some time used cocaine more than once a week. For some, this period lasted some months, when as much as 30 lines of cocaine were used per day of cocaine use. More of these heavy users reported adverse effects of cocaine than was the case for light users. Nonetheless, most heavy users had reduced their use by themselves to the point that their current cocaine use was no different from that of light users. Possible explanations for this apparently spontaneous reduction are discussed.

Book reviews : Traffickers: Drug Markets and Law Enforcement Nicholas Dorn, Karim Murji and Nigel South Routledge, London and New York, 1991, xvii + 253pp, £30.00 hbk, £10.99 pbk

argue is best viewed not as adversarial but as ’consensual’, in which an agreed view of events is constructed by legal operatives. The voices of the powerless (defendants and victims) are largely silent. The work on which this book is based was carried out in three police force areas during 1986-88. The research focused on the study of police and prosecution decision making in 1080 adult and juvenile cases. The weight of empirical material provides considerable backing for the authors conclusions, though they should have been more explicit about the method underlying the selection of those cases which are highlighted. The authors’ have been criticised for under valuing the extent of recent reforms and safeguards for suspects, especially when the police in Britain are compared with other countries. But other work by these authors provides considerable backing for their views about inadequacies in the legal process from police questioning to the work of defence solicitors. It is not surprising therefore that the overall impression which emerges from this book is one of a rather too consensual criminal justice system. While the authors clearly qualify any such reading, the weight of the analysis does lend itself to such a view. It is one which is keeping with the conclusions of this study, which places little hope in the idea of legal reforms without broader social change. At a time when all research in this area seems driven by a narrow need to inform policy, this book should be particularly welcomed for its critical approach. It deserves a wide readership.

The Structure of Scotland's Drug Agencies

One in a series reporting a national survey of all Scotlands drug agencies which was carried out in mid 1987, this paper concentrates on the location and age of the 73 agencies researched, the number and type of staff involved, the services provided, the bases of service provision, and upon gaps in provision identified by agency personnel.

Book Reviews : CORPORATE CRIME IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY, by John Braithwaite. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. 440 pp.

Burgess acknowledges, more by implication than by specification, the researcher’s need for consistency among all three levels of analysis. That is, the level of the researcher’s theory of method (research techniques) which backs up into and is consistent with the researcher’s theory of research-in-society, and thirdly the level of the researcher’s interaction with and explanations of the subject’s theories of everyday experience. Values are seen as a central component in all three levels of explanation (King, 1984). This introduction to field research is an excellent work because of the clear way in which the topics have been approached and the straightforward treatment of some important aspects of research. It is very well illustrated with examples and recommendations for further reading.

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Donald F. Roy died suddenly of a massive stroke in San Diego on June 27, 1980. It was mercifully quick, but tragically ironic. He had recently retired from Duke University where he had worked since 1950, and had been full professor since 1968. He was mostly isolated in North Carolina, where initial glad-handing speedily soured into ostracism when it was discovered that he preferred the wrong side of town, and the right side of humanity. When he went there, nobody would believe that he was concerned with union organization to help the workers rather than smash them. He never changed: spending most of his life on the side of the working stiff. Both working as onehe could legitimately describe himself as having two careers (he worked through 1925-1929 and 1938-1947 in 24 different jobs); and for them. He was assembling the analysis of over twenty years observation of union organizing campaigns-he so nearly had it done, and had Published only a few derived artlcles.! when he died. Donald Roy is best known for his path-breaking ethnographic work as a lathe-operating ordinary fellow in an engineering factory. Fate turns curious circles, and sadly one of his last tasks was reviewing a book written by a Young sociologist who had unwittingly chosen the same factory, thirty years later, as the site for his own research. Characteristically, Don felt enlightened after reading it. 4

Obituary Donald F. ROY, 1909-1980 One of the Boys on the Line

What I tried to establish in Chapter 2 was that it is technically intellectually improper for anyone to claim that a ‘crime’ has been ‘committed’ until a properly constituted court has delivered that verdict as final. This now needs slight comparative qualification. I am not suggesting that individuals cannot intend to break the law. Nor that situational ethnographic work designed to display and intellectually organise those intentions in writing (e.g., Ditton, 1977) is now to be declared faulty, defunct, and all-along-misguided and henceforth-to-be-recanted.1 What I am suggesting is that at the level of societally theorised ethnography, those intentions are unimportant and wholly insignificant when compared with the intentions of the infinitely more powerful controllers.2 What universally decides whether or not a person is ‘guilty’ is the eventual finding of the court — something only probabilistically associated with his (or anybody else’s) claims concerning his initial intent.

‘Responsibility’ v. Response Ability: The Controlological Programme

The labelling perspective is dead: long live labelling theory. However, this book is a plea for reformulation, not one for resuscitation or rejuvenation. Rather than celebrate or bewail the currently morbid state of affairs, I hope instead to analytically reground the labelling approach. I think this is possible as labelling is vilified not so much because of its analytic inabilities, but rather because it has become an institutional failure. Since institutional failings are easier to correct than analytic ones are to patch up, there is still a chance that the magnificently imaginative scope of the labelling perspective might be refashioned as an intellectually and institutionally competent theory.

The Controlological Pedigree

The crucial proposition of the labelling perspective was that rather than crime being unquestionably generative of control, (maybe) ironically, control produced crime. Whilst tremendously influential however, the proposition has never been vigorously explored as part of a general theoretical structure. This gap may partly be explained by the overwhelming emphasis within labelling upon substantive specification, but mostly by the submerged epistemological hiatus which lay between Lemert’s conventional (i.e., causal) phraseology — ‘leads to’, ‘hypothesis’ — and the radical (i.e., interpretative) allegiances of those who followed Lemert into the brave new world of labelling.