Você está na página 1de 6

Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358

Commentary

Erasing pleasure from public discourse on illicit drugs:


On the creation and reproduction of an absence
David Moore ∗
National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845, Australia
Received 2 April 2007; received in revised form 5 July 2007; accepted 17 July 2007

Abstract
In 1988, sociologist Stephen Mugford argued that the dominant framework in the drugs field was the ‘pathology paradigm’ and that, as a
consequence, considerations of ‘pleasure’ in relation to drug use were marginalised. As Mugford noted, an understanding of the subjective
motives for drug use, including pleasure, is an essential part of any coherent response. Twenty years on, it appears that little has changed. In
this paper, I consider some of the processes that may have contributed to the ongoing absence of discourses of pleasure in the drugs field. The
paper is divided into three sections. In the first, following Bourdieu, I focus on drug research as a ‘social field’, arguing that power relations
between research disciplines work against considerations of pleasure, and that researching pleasure does not generate useful forms of research
capital. Second, I argue that harm reduction policy and practice, in its construction of a neo-liberal drug-using subject, limits opportunities
for considering the role of pleasure in drug use. The final section explores the broader historical and contemporary context for drug research,
policy and practice by considering the discursive formations that contribute to the legitimacy granted to particular forms of pleasure in the
privileging of a ‘civilised’ body over a ‘grotesque’ body.
© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Drug use; Discourse; Pleasure; Research; Harm reduction; Bodies

Introduction
Search term Google hits
In 1988, sociologist Stephen Mugford argued that the Drugs and pleasure 2,030
Drug-related harm 151,000
dominant framework in the drugs field was the ‘pathol-
Drug benefitsa 1,050,000
ogy paradigm’ and that, as a consequence, considerations Drug problems 1,600,000
of ‘pleasure’ in relation to drug use were marginalised a A scan of the first several pages of hits suggests that the term ‘drug benefits’ often
(Mugford, 1988). As Mugford noted, an understanding of appears in relation to claims about the properties of pharmaceutical drugs.
the subjective motives for drug use, including pleasure, is
an essential part of any coherent response. Twenty years
on, it appears that little has changed. A scan of the 2001, A search of several commonly-cited drug journals (conducted 9/11/2006)
2004 and 2006 programs of the International Conference for yielded the following results:
the Reduction of Drug-Related Harm reveals no instances of Journal (years searched) ‘pleasure’ in titles ‘harm’ in titles
‘pleasure’ in the titles of presentations. (The 2002, 2003 and or abstracts or abstracts

2005 programs were not available electronically. I attended Addiction (1997–2006) 512a 2,151
Drug and Alcohol Dependence 6 46
these conferences and noted two papers in 2005 that con- (1975–2006)
tained ‘pleasure’ in their titles.) A Google ‘advanced’ search Drug and Alcohol Review 0 84
(conducted 9/11/2006) yielded the following results: (1990–2006)
International Journal of Drug Policy 5 179
(1998–2006)
a A scan of the first 50 articles suggests that the term ‘pleasure’ often appears

∗ Tel.: +61 8 9266 1600; fax: +61 8 9266 1611. in studies of alcohol or tobacco use or in neurobiological research rather than in
discussions of the subjective motives for drug use.
E-mail address: D.Moore@curtin.edu.au.

0955-3959/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.07.004
354 D. Moore / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358

In this paper, I consider some of the processes that may Drug research as a social field
have contributed to the ongoing absence of discourses of plea-
sure in the drugs field. First, following Bourdieu, I focus on First, as Stewart’s work demonstrates, discussions of plea-
drug research as a ‘social field’ – that is, as ‘a space of social sure are not completely absent from research accounts of drug
forces and struggles’ (Wacquant, 1989, p. 38) – arguing that use with drug users themselves articulating such discourses.
power relations between research disciplines work against Qualitative researchers (e.g., Fitzgerald, Louie, Rosenthal, &
considerations of pleasure, and that researching pleasure does Crofts, 1999; MacLean, 2005), reporting the views of their
not generate useful forms of research capital. Second, I argue research participants, have also written about the pleasures
that harm reduction policy and practice, in its construction of drug use. But these are ‘subjugated knowledges’ – partic-
of a neo-liberal drug-using subject, limits opportunities for ularly the discourses of drug users – that struggle for equal
considering the role of pleasure in drug use. The final section legitimacy with the dominant discourses of medicine, psy-
explores the broader historical and contemporary context for chology and epidemiology. This domination is underpinned
drug research, policy and practice by considering the discur- by and preserved through greater funding, numerical supe-
sive formations that contribute to the legitimacy granted to riority in terms of researchers and projects, and the use of
particular forms of pleasure in the privileging of a ‘civilised’ methodological and analytical approaches that are accorded
body over a ‘grotesque’ body. greater scientific credibility. More broadly, this domination
Before proceeding, it is also worth acknowledging that has evolved as part of the development of neo-liberal forms
defining ‘pleasure’ is not straightforward. As I show below, of governmentality involving the expert surveillance, classi-
the disciplines involved in researching drug use define fication and regulation of populations.
pleasure in different ways, when they are not ignoring A useful way of thinking about subjugated/dominant
or reframing it as something else. The Oxford English knowledges is to see drug research as a ‘social field’. For
Dictionary (http://dictionary.oed.com; retrieved 27/11/2006) Bourdieu, a social field is:
defines pleasure as the ‘condition or sensation induced by
the experience or anticipation of what is felt to be good or . . . a network . . . of objective relations between positions
desirable’. Desirable sensations are central in the following objectively defined, in their existence and in the deter-
evocative description of drug-related pleasure from Stewart’s minations they impose upon their occupants, agents or
The Heroin Users (1996, p. 36): institutions, by their present and potential situation . . . in
the structure of the distribution of species of power (or
I murmured a wordless response as the smack came on. capital) whose possession commands access to the specific
The rush is so hard to describe. It’s like waiting for a profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objec-
distant thunderstorm to move overhead. A strange forebod- tive relation to other positions (domination, subordination,
ing. A bizarre, awesome calm. It’s in your blood, moving homology, etc.). (Wacquant, 1989, p. 39)
towards your brain, relentlessly; unstoppable, inevitable.
A feeling starts to grow like a rumble from the horizon. Furthermore:
The feeling swells, surging, soaring, crashing, screaming
to a devastating crescendo. The gear smashes against the As a space of potential and active forces, the field is also
top of your skull with the power of an uncapped oil well. a field of struggles aimed at preserving or transforming
You won’t be able to bear the intense ecstasy. It is all the configuration of these forces. Concretely, the field as a
too much. Your body may fall apart. The rock that is in structure of objective relations of force between positions
your head shatters harmlessly into a million sparkling, tin- undergirds and guides the strategies whereby the occu-
kling smithereens. They tumble at a thousand miles an hour pants of these positions seek, individually or collectively
straight back down over your body, warming, insulating, to safeguard or improve their position, and to impose the
tingling, denying all pain, fear and sadness. You are stoned, principle of hierarchization most favourable to their own
you are high. You are above and below reality and the products. (Wacquant, 1989, p. 40)
law.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked again. Applying this frame, the drugs field is constituted through
My chin was on my chest, my eyes closed, I suppose. a network of positions occupied by individuals (e.g., pol-
‘I’m just great,’ I murmured. ‘I’m fine. It’s fantastic. It’s icy makers, practitioners, researchers, community members)
wonderful. I want to do this forever . . .’. and institutions (e.g., federal, state and local government,
drug services, research centres). These positions are related
For the purposes of this paper, I define drug-related through relations of domination, subordination or equiva-
pleasure as desirable bodily experience arising from the inter- lence, and through struggles over a distribution of power that
action of pharmacology, subjectivity, culture and history, enables and reproduces access to scarce resources.
while, at the same time, acknowledging the difficulty, per- What do the dominant research disciplines have to say
haps even the impossibility, of constructing an analytical, about pleasure and drugs? Epidemiological work – reflecting
discursive account of such corporeal experience. its public health origins, the duty of modern citizens to be
D. Moore / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358 355

health-promoting and risk-averse, and the role of institutions to fund studies of pleasure. Drug research must compete for
and governments in encouraging self-care – tends to focus these scarce resources with heart disease and cancer, so there
on quantity and frequency of drug use and related harms or is a vested interest in focusing on, and possibly amplifying,
on ‘risk factors’. More recently, the more neutral term ‘out- drug-related harms. Government tenders may also entail a
comes of drug use’ has been used, thus encompassing both the degree of funder control over the analysis and dissemination
risks/harms and the ‘benefits’ of drug use, which could con- of findings (Miller, Moore, & Strang, 2006). Health funds
ceivably include its pleasures. But the term ‘benefits’ imports and government departments are also more comfortable with
a utilitarian focus, which removes pleasure from the realm of quantitative methods and analysis, or with rapid assessment
bodily experience. This may be the result of what Campbell approaches, and their timelines are more suited to these types
(1987, p. 60) has termed the ‘original careless formulation’ of research. Aware of these limitations, researchers self-
of utilitarianism: regulate and strategise through second-guessing what they
think is likely to be funded.
. . . utility is described as ‘that property which produces Another important area for drug researchers is their impact
benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness’. Since on policy and practice. In order to have maximum impact,
these are very different concepts (or, at least, the third is not research needs to focus on assessing or reducing harm. The
equatable with the first two), the subsequent development rise of ‘evidence-based’ policy and practice also creates
of utilitarianism required that some selection should be problems, as accounts of pleasure produced by interpre-
made from this list, and . . . the ‘good’ became identified tive, theoretically driven research, or by drug users, may be
with the ‘necessary’, that which served to meet human accorded less weight. In this climate, it is hard to sell the
needs, with the consequence that the concept of pleasure importance of studying pleasure despite implicit acceptance
was largely ignored. of its existence. And there is also a professional risk in writing
about pleasure, of being identified as ‘pro-drug’ or accused
Furthermore, the term ‘benefits’ is usually coupled with of not taking seriously drug-related problems. Interestingly,
‘risks’ as if to ensure that benefits, including pleasures, cannot Stewart follows the passage cited earlier by stating that she
be thought of outside their relationship to ‘risks’. does not seek to advertise a ‘deadly pursuit’ but to record an
Psychological work also rarely focuses on pleasure and experience that is attractive.
drugs. According to the Introduction to a special issue on These processes contribute to the erasing or marginalising
the psychology of pleasure, ‘pleasure is the most neglected of pleasure in research accounts. Writing about pleasure does
topic . . ., at least in relation to claims about its importance’ not earn a researcher much in the way of research capital, so it
(Russell, 2003). Psychology transforms pleasure into ‘posi- is professionally safer to accept the focus on risks and harms.
tive emotion’, ‘impulse driven behaviour’ and ‘hedonic tone’.
In these discourses, pleasure is seen as ‘frivolous’ in com-
parison with more pressing health issues, or ‘unscientific’, The subject of harm reduction
because it cannot be quantified (Coveney & Bunton, 2003, p.
161). In neuropsychology, psychiatry and medicine, the inter- The second set of processes that may have contributed to
actions of pharmacology with historical, cultural, social and the ongoing absence of pleasure centres on harm reduction.
spatial processes are eschewed in favour of a reductive ‘sci- Drawing on ideas developed more fully elsewhere (Moore &
entific’ focus on ‘sensation-seeking syndrome’ (Zuckerman, Fraser, 2006), I argue that harm reduction policy and practice,
1979), dopamine release (Keane, 1999) and neuronal activ- in its construction of a neo-liberal drug-using subject, limits
ity (Martin-Soelch, Leenders, Chevalley, Missimer, & Künig, opportunities for considering the role of pleasure in drug use.
2001). Such dominant knowledges reinforce unassailable O’Malley and Valverde (2004) have noted that harm reduc-
truths about drugs ‘beyond or separate from ideology or tion is silent on pleasure – there are instead references to
power’ (Driscoll, 2000, p. 8). drug use for ‘personal and social needs’ (as they note, the
A recognition of power relations forces a consideration term ‘needs’ is ‘redolent of necessity and thus compulsion’).
of the resources at stake in the drug research field – such as This, they argue, is very puzzling because harm reduction
funding and impact on policy and practice – and who has operates with a rational actor, who freely selects behavioural
access to them. The capital possessed by psychology, epi- options on the basis that they deliver more pleasure than pain.
demiology and medicine allows them better access to these O’Malley and Valverde suggest that one possible explanation
‘profits’ of the field. Struggles over funding arise in a wider is that rational choice models engineer choice in favour of
institutional research landscape in Australia in which uni- desired outcomes – in this case, the non-use of drugs.
versities must position themselves as ‘research-intensive’. An analysis of the politics of harm reduction offers
There is increasing pressure to generate external funding from another possible explanation. Harm reduction policy and
nationally competitive research bodies, government research practice constructs a particular form of drug-using subject – a
tenders and consultancies. Health agencies such as Aus- health-conscious citizen capable of rational decision-making,
tralia’s National Health and Medical Research Council have self-determination, self-regulation and risk management in
limited funds, often supporting priority areas, so are unlikely order to minimise drug-related harm. This neo-liberal vision
356 D. Moore / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358

of the drug-using subject is a positive development in the best advances the interests of drug users, but the adoption of a
sense that it attempts to dislodge previous understandings neo-liberal subject in harm reduction policy and practice may
of drug users as irrational, and it accords them the status have erased as a legitimate activity consideration of pleasure
and attributes granted to other citizens of neo-liberal democ- and its pursuit.
racies. Neo-liberal subjectivity may also be experienced as
empowering by drug users, thus enabling them to deal with
drug-related problems and services more effectively. Bodies, pleasure and drugs
But there is also a downside. Adopting a neo-liberal sub-
ject obscures the material constraints on practice that arise The third set of processes that may have contributed to
from inequitable social and political structures. It may also the erasing of pleasure concerns historical and contempo-
prevent drug users from developing a more politicised view rary Western discourses on bodies, pleasure and drugs. As
of their life situation. Most importantly for this paper, adopt- Douglas (1986) has noted, scientific work is not isolated from
ing a neo-liberal subject displaces from view attributes that the wider cultural and social contexts in which it is situ-
do not sit comfortably with this version of the subject – ated. My starting point is the historical process, beginning
pleasure, desire, emotion. Applying Lupton’s (1995) post- in the Enlightenment, whereby bodies, subjects, spaces and
structuralist critique of health promotion, we could argue that social relations were increasingly constructed through con-
people may resist, negotiate or ignore harm reduction impera- tested hierarchies of ‘high’ and ‘low’ (Stallybrass & White,
tives ‘because of a conscious sense of frustration, resentment 1986; see also Elias, 2000). High discourses were associated
or anger, . . . [or] because they derive greater pleasure . . . with the church, the state, the university; low discourses with
from other practices of the self’ (1995, p. 133). Furthermore the urban poor, the marginalised, the colonised (Stallybrass
(Lupton, 1995, p. 156): & White, 1986, p. 4). A central theme in this struggle was the
privileging of high representations of the bourgeois, liberal
Resistance to and negotiation of [harm reduction] imper- body of progressive rationalism – an ordered, classical, tran-
atives . . . may also originate at the emotional level or scendentally individualist body which prioritised the upper
the unconscious, places where desire, fear and pleasure regions – the head, the ‘spirit’, reason – and which was
are repressed, emerge and are constantly in tension with directed by rationality. By contrast, in the high discourse, the
external government imperatives, or at the level of the low body was deemed to be ‘grotesque’, sensual, carniva-
non-conscious, where bodily practices are adopted and lesque – it was erotic, licentious, physical. Grotesque bodies
reproduced as part of the habits of everyday life. were associated with ‘carnal pleasures’ which emerged from
the sensuous body – a vulgar, volatile body that ‘refuse[d] to
Recent research on Vancouver’s safer injection facility be disciplined’, was ‘highly disordered, dangerous and pol-
(SIF) provides some relevant data (Kerr, Small, Moore, & luting’ (Coveney & Bunton, 2003, p. 169) and ‘unpredictable,
Wood, 2007). While supportive of the facility, some SIF users perverse and risky’ (Coveney & Bunton, 2003, p. 171). By
stated that they did not always use it if their aim was to expe- contrast, the liberal body was associated with ‘disciplined
rience heavy intoxication, as SIF staff would typically rouse pleasure’, ‘pleasure that has been rationalized’ (Coveney &
those who appeared to be ‘copping a nod’ in order to avoid Bunton, 2003, p. 170), emerging from the verbal and cogni-
overdose: tive realm, to be reflected on as aesthetic, ‘civilized’ pleasure.
It was ‘[r]easoned, reasonable and safe’ (Coveney & Bunton,
Same thing when you’re on the nod, and you’re sitting 2003, p. 171).
there enjoying your high, and all of a sudden you’ve got Where do illicit drugs fit in this struggle between the
some nurse, ‘Hey! You okay? You all right?’ Shaking you grotesque and the (neo-)liberal body? Illicit drugs threaten
and shit like that. Like, a lot of people take offence to that, the liberal body and its disciplined pleasures. They are
right? [Yeah]. Yeah, fuck, I’m all right . . . can’t I even incompatible with rationality and discipline – contaminating,
enjoy my fucking high? corrupting, seducing and destroying the will (Keane, 2002;
Manderson, 2005, p. 38). They are a ‘powerful and destruc-
Hence, drug users did not use the SIF in precisely those cir- tive force’ (Keane, 1999, p. 64) and present a ‘promise of
cumstances that placed them at high risk of overdose, because pleasure so potent, so alluring, that it tricks the subject in
of the desire to experience acute pleasure. the first place, then traps them and finally entombs them’
However, to insist on the incorporation of such attributes (Manderson, 2005, p. 44). Drug possession leads to loss
as desire, pleasure and emotion in any form of subject for drug of identity and agency; the drug user, most specifically the
users is also extremely risky. It may reinforce the stigmatisa- ‘addict’, is a threat to the modern liberal ideology of auton-
tion of drug users as irrational and animated by compulsive omy and freedom (Keane, 2002, pp. 3–4; Manderson, 2005,
desires and pleasures, and further entrench discrimination in p. 49). Addiction is seen as depriving a person of free will
employment, health and welfare contexts. There is no clear and the capacity for autonomous choice – both key attributes
answer to which of these options – embracing the neo-liberal of liberal actors (Keane, 2002). In particular, addiction is
subject or rejecting it in favour of alternative formulations – equated with disorder, fragmentation and self-destruction. It
D. Moore / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358 357

undermines the reason and rationality necessary to practice and sexual depravity’. Although she notes that drugs have
disciplined pleasure. Drugs represent illusory pleasures that often been ‘a vehicle for articulating profound social anx-
lead to compromised will in the form of craving (Keane, ieties’, including the ‘despoiled’ or ‘hypersexual’ woman,
1999). In this view, drugs lead away from valorised forms and that women’s bodies have often been seen as ‘danger-
of disciplined pleasure to produce grotesque bodies. Inter- ous, diseased, and polluted’, their ‘sexualized status within
estingly, whereas illicit drugs are positioned as corrupters of contemporary drug discourse warrants special consideration’
liberal bodies, medically prescribed drugs such as antidepres- (Maher, 1997, pp. 194–195). She focuses on the ‘hypersex-
sants are positioned as restorers of liberal bodies. ual hypothesis’, in which crack use is ‘graphically equated
My first example of the discourse on grotesque, drugged with chemically induced sexual slavery’. Women crack users,
bodies concerns the methamphetamine ‘skater’, as depicted in this discourse, ‘respond indiscriminately to opportunities
in an Australian current affairs program entitled ‘The Ice for income generation’. They are ‘inscribed in a discourse
Age’ (broadcast by the ABC, 20/3/2006). Below I reproduce of risk and contagion and readily positioned as vectors of
an extract describing the program on the ABC website: AIDS, drug use, and moral contamination’ (Maher, 1997,
p. 195), ‘[c]orrupted and polluted by their passions for the
It’s cheap, highly addictive and ultra-powerful. ‘Ice’, or crystal “glass dick”’ (Maher, 1997, p. 194).
methamphetamine, is now more popular than heroin, playing havoc with However, as Valverde (2002) has noted, whereas in the
the minds and bodies of nearly 50,000 Australians. above discourse, ‘excessive’ use of ‘dangerous’ drugs leads
Ice is filling emergency wards with psychotic, dangerous patients, to the
alarm of doctors who thought they’d seen everything.
away from truth and rationality, there is another longstand-
‘They’re the most out of control, violent human beings I have ever seen ing, albeit less prominent, discourse on bodies, pleasure and
in my life – and I’ve been around for a long time,’ says one. ‘It makes drugs. Romanticism, the artistic and intellectual movement
heroin seem like the really good old days’. originating in the late eighteenth century, accorded drugs a
Four Corners goes to the heart of this destructive new epidemic. Reporter less sinister, even a valuable position. In this discourse, the
Matthew Carney takes his camera into
a netherworld inhabited by hardcore ice addicts – or skaters as they call
‘risks’ of drugs could be managed by self-governing users
themselves – who live for their next hit. who pursue ‘occasional civilised pleasures’. Drugs could
This tribe of junkies roams the inner city, scoring and shooting up. They take one closer to truth, could reveal, through hedonistic
stay manically high for up to a week, without food or sleep. Finally, they self-exploration, the ‘real, authentic self, buried beneath cap-
crash and eat, before the welfare cheque arrives and the cycle starts all italism and social convention’. This ethic, over time, became
over again.
‘We’re the fringe-dwellers’, says ‘Mick’, whose veins are so wrecked he
linked to commodity consumption and pleasures. The con-
can barely find a place to inject. His mate ‘Mattie’ can’t imagine a life sumption of pleasurable commodities became an avenue
without ice: ‘It just seems to find me, it’s like everywhere I go, it’s there to new experiences and new identities (Campbell, 1987;
. . . who knows what’s gonna happen in 10 years’ time mate?’ O’Malley & Mugford, 1991).
‘Lenore’ boasts 23 personalities, each with its own name. The most recent expression of this view is offered by
She obsessively sorts through rubbish for days on end when she’s on ice.
It’s her way of making order out of her chaos. Asked what would stop
Measham (2004). She argues that the normalised drug use
her from using ice, she replies: ‘Death’. of English youth is not ‘pathological’ but part of a broader
Another friend, ‘John’, is covered in scabs. He shift to commodified pleasure in the leisure sphere – a ‘calcu-
picks constantly at his skin to rid himself of ‘ice bugs’ that he imagines lated hedonism’ or ‘controlled loss of control’. This form of
to be living inside him, the result of a bad batch of ice. His delusion is drug use occurs within temporal, spatial, social and consump-
common among ice addicts.
(http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1593168.htm; © 2007
tive limits, and expresses a ‘rational cost-benefit analysis in
ABC; retrieved 8/11/2006, emphasis added) recreational drug use’ (Measham, 2004, p. 319). It allows a
‘time-out’ release from work and other responsibilities with-
In the televised program, Ice is also linked with other out necessarily interfering with them. Such drug use ‘can be
instances of the grotesque body such as the hypersexual considered as both problem and solution in contemporary
emergency patient who masturbates for 16 hours and a drug society’, as both a reaction to and expression of capital-
user who discusses injecting Ice into his penis. The website ist consumer society. Where there is ontological insecurity
extract and program inscribes several of the themes identi- and a culture of control, reflexive risk-calculation allows a
fied above: illicit drugs as threats to autonomy and freedom; sense of autonomy and a form of escape (Measham, 2004,
as dangerous, powerful forces; as producing disorder and pp. 321–322).
fragmentation; and as polluting. This may be a period, then, where the dominant discourse
My second example of discourses of grotesque, drugged – drugs as corrupters of rationality, drugs as producers of
bodies concerns the hypersexual ‘crack whore’. Maher grotesque bodies – is being challenged by another discourse
(1997) argues that one of the ways in which women drug users in which drug use and disciplined pleasure are not seen as
are denied agency is through the discourse of ‘crack-pipe-as- incompatible. The discourse of normalisation poses a cat-
pimp’, which positions female crack users as overdetermined egory threat – the pursuit of disciplined and commodified
‘victims of pharmacology’ (Maher, 1997, p. 8). The media pleasure via substances that are associated with irrationality,
and much social science literature, according to Maher, rep- disorder and fragmentation. Although, like Holt (2005), we
resent women crack users as ‘prone to violence, immorality, might question its valorisation of ‘sensible and strategic use’
358 D. Moore / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 353–358

and, following Lupton, query its promotion of neo-liberal Keane, H. (1999). Adventures of the addicted brain. Australian Feminist
norms and the regulation of unruly bodies, which might Studies, 14(29), 63–76.
Keane, H. (2002). What’s wrong with addiction? Melbourne: Melbourne
further stigmatise those unable or unwilling to adopt such dis-
University Press.
ciplined practices, the normalisation discourse does highlight Kerr, T., Small, W., Moore, D., & Wood, E. (2007). A micro-environmental
the cultural links between drugs, pleasure and capitalist con- intervention to reduce the harms associated with drug-related overdose:
sumer society. It exposes a fundamental and ongoing refusal Evidence from the evaluation of Vancouver’s safer injection facility.
by the drugs field to accept the close interweaving of drug International Journal of Drug Policy, 18(1), 37–45.
use and contemporary forms of culture – an ongoing inabil- Lupton, D. (1995). The imperative of health: Public health and the regulated
body. London: Sage.
ity to genuinely step outside the pathology paradigm. Making MacLean, S. (2005). ‘It might be a scummy-arsed drug but it’s a sick buzz’:
drugs and pleasure more visible might be a first step towards Chroming and pleasure. Contemporary Drug Problems, 32(2), 295–318.
creating a discursive space in which, as Driscoll (2000, p. ix) Maher, L. (1997). Sexed work: Gender, race and resistance in a Brooklyn
has argued in the US context, ‘we can construct other dis- drug market. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
courses about drugs [and, we might add, about drug users] Manderson, D. (2005). Possessed: Drug policy, witchcraft and belief. Cul-
tural Studies, 19(1), 36–63.
that will not produce the damaging consequences that we are Martin-Soelch, C., Leenders, K. L., Chevalley, A.-F., Missimer, J., & Künig,
currently experiencing’. G. (2001). Reward mechanisms in the brain and their role in depen-
dence: Evidence from neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies.
Brain Research Reviews, 36, 139–149.
Acknowledgements Measham, F. (2004). The decline of ecstasy, the rise of ‘binge’ drinking and
the persistence of pleasure. Probation Journal, 51(4), 309–326.
Miller, P., Moore, D., & Strang, J. (2006). The regulation of research by
The National Drug Research Institute receives core fund- funding bodies: An emerging ethical issue for the alcohol and other drug
ing from the Australian Government Department of Health sector? International Journal of Drug Policy, 17(1), 12–16.
and Ageing. I thank Suzanne Fraser, two anonymous refer- Moore, D., & Fraser, S. (2006). Putting at risk what we know: Reflecting on
ees and co-editors Martin Holt and Carla Treloar for helpful the drug-using subject in harm reduction and its political implications.
Social Science and Medicine, 62(12), 3035–3047.
comments on earlier drafts. Mugford, S. (1988). Pathology, pleasure, profit and the state: Towards
an integrated theory of drug use. Paper presented at the Australian
and New Zealand Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Sydney,
References August 22.
O’Malley, P., & Mugford, S. (1991). The demand for intoxicating com-
modities: Implications for the ‘War on Drugs’. Social Justice, 18(4),
Campbell, C. (1987). The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern con-
49–75.
sumerism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
O’Malley, P., & Valverde, M. (2004). Pleasure, freedom and drugs: The uses
Coveney, J., & Bunton, R. (2003). In pursuit of the study of pleasure: Impli-
of ‘pleasure’ in liberal governance of drug and alcohol consumption.
cations for health research and practice. Health, 7(2), 161–179.
Sociology, 38(1), 25–42.
Douglas, M. (1986). How institutions think. London: Routledge and Kegan
Russell, J. A. (2003). The return of pleasure. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2),
Paul.
161–165.
Driscoll, L. (2000). Reconsidering drugs: Mapping Victorian and modern
Stallybrass, P., & White, A. (1986). The politics and poetics of transgression.
drug discourses. New York: Palgrave.
London: Methuen.
Elias, N. (2000). The civilizing process (Revised ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Stewart, T. (1996). The heroin users. London: Pandora.
Fitzgerald, J. L., Louie, R., Rosenthal, D., & Crofts, N. (1999). The mean-
Valverde, M. (2002). Experience and truthtelling: Intoxicated autobiography
ing of the rush for initiates to injecting drug use. Contemporary Drug
and ethical subjectivity. Outlines, 1, 3–18.
Problems, 26(3), 481–504.
Wacquant, L. D. (1989). Towards a reflexive sociology: A workshop with
Holt, M. (2005). Young people and illicit drug use in Australia. Social
Pierre Bourdieu. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 26–63.
Research Issues Paper 3 (National Centre in HIV Social Research).
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of
Retrieved 21st December 2006 from http://nchsr.arts.unsw.edu.
arousal. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
au/pdf%20reports/SRIP03.pdf.

Você também pode gostar