“We don’t have no drugs education”: The myth of universal drugs education in English secondary schools?

BackgroundDespite concerns regarding youth drug use and ‘standards’ of drugs education in British schools, little is known about young people's routine experiences of drugs education at school, or schools’ other priorities, policies and practices relating to drugs.MethodsQualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students aged 14–15 (N = 50) and teachers (N = 10) at four schools in England. We used thematic content analysis to explore: young people's accounts of drugs education at secondary school and what they have learnt from this; and students’ and teachers’ accounts of schools’ wider policies and practices relating to drugs.ResultsA recurring theme was that students reported having received little or no drugs education; the majority could not remember having had any at their secondary school. These students were not the ‘drugwise’ youth described in the normalisation thesis and young people wanted their school to provide them with more information. Teachers recognised that schools’ drugs policies were rarely implemented in practice and that drugs education was not a priority. Schools also appear to be adopting new strategies based on surveillance and targeting to control students’ drug use. In some cases referrals to a drugs counsellor were coercive and appeared to merely replace classroom-based drugs education.ConclusionThis study provides further evidence of the gap between drug policies and practice. It may be possible to increase the priority given to comprehensive drugs education and supportive drugs policies by modifying the incentive structures that schools work within. New targeted responses are unlikely to be effective at reducing drug-related harm at a population level because of the small number of students reached, and can be stigmatising. Further research is needed to explore schools’ focus on surveillance and targeted control rather than universal education, and to examine interventions that might ensure schools implement adequate drugs education.     

Party drugs and party people: examining the ‘normalization’ of recreational drug use in Melbourne,Australia

This paper reports the findings of survey research recently completed in Melbourne, Australia among a sample of 379 bar and nightclub patrons. Drawing from the work of English researchers Howard Parker and Fiona Measham, this study examines the ‘normalization’ of young people's drug use and the links between this drug use and young people's ‘time out’—their leisure time and ‘cultural consumption’ habits. The paper outlines the research participants’ use of alcohol and other drugs including measures of both ‘lifetime’ and more recent use; the prevalence of illegal drug use within the peer group; the general accessibility and availability of illegal drugs, as well as participants’ knowledge of various drug-related risks and harms. The use of alcohol and other drugs was found to be widespread, with 96% of survey respondents identifying as ‘current drinkers’, whilst 56% reported the ‘lifetime use’ of illegal drugs. Just over a third (35.2%) reported the recent (last month) use of an illegal drug, typically ecstasy, cannabis and/or amphetamines. I conclude that such findings provide further support for the claim that drug use is becoming increasingly normalized within youth populations in Australia. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings in terms of the design and implementation of drug prevention and harm minimisation strategies in Australia and elsewhere.     

Authentic advice for authentic problems? Legal information in Australian classroom drug education

This article examines the legal information provided in Australian alcohol and other drug (AOD) classroom education documents. We focus first on the technical presentation of the information, analysed using Petraglia’s notion of ‘authenticity’ and, second, on the constitution of particular ‘problems’, analysed using Bacchi’s concept of ‘problematisation’. We argue that in working towards deterrence, drug education provides legal information in two ways. First, much of the information focuses on the legal status of drugs, warning young people about the illegality of drugs. Second, information is communicated through structured group activities posed as creating opportunities for discussion. We argue that these strategies aim for a goal of deterrence and that this fits awkwardly with Australia’s avowed commitment to harm reduction drug policies. We argue further that young people’s relationship with the legal aspects of AOD use is too complex for these approaches and the goal of deterrence generally to be productive. In contrast, we propose an approach to drug education that includes a process of open problematisation in which students are invited to consider all aspects of use including the current regulation of drugs. We argue that approaching drug education in this way may more effectively inform about current legal arrangements and encourage the identification of potential problems and solutions more relevant to the lives of its audiences.     

The size and mix of government spending on illicit drug policy in Australia

Aim . To estimate how much governments in Australia spend on reducing and dealing with illicit drug problems. Methods . Government documents and supplementary information sources were used to estimate drug‐related expenditure for the financial year 2002–03, in Australian dollars. Public sector expenditure on reducing drug problems (‘proactive expenditure’) was classified into four policy functions: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. Expenditure related to the consequences of drug use (‘reactive expenditure’) was included as a separate category. Results . Spending by Australian governments in financial year 2002–03 on all drug‐related activities was estimated to be $3.2 billion. Proactive expenditure was estimated to be $1.3 billion, comprising 55% on enforcement, 23% on prevention, 17% on treatment, 3% on harm reduction and 1% on activities that span several of these functions. Expenditure on dealing with the consequences of drug use was estimated to be $1.9 billion, with the majority the result of crime‐related consequences. Conclusion . Several insights result from estimating these expenditures. First, law enforcement is the largest drug policy component, with Australian governments also spending significant amounts on treatment and prevention programmes. Secondly, apart from the prevention component, Australia's drug policy mix is strikingly similar to recent international estimates. Finally, expenditures associated with dealing with the consequences of illicit drugs are large and important for assessing drug‐related public sector expenditure.     

Injecting practices and knowledge of the associated risk among 16–19-year-old injecting drug users in Plymouth,UK

There has been significant research into the harms associated with injecting drugs and about the use of needle exchange programmes (NEPs) by adult injecting drug users (IDUs) in the United Kingdom. However, very limited research has been conducted investigating the knowledge, experiences and beliefs of IDUs under 18 years old, who due to their age are denied access to anonymous NEPs. This article reports on a small, exploratory study which examines the injecting practices of 16–19-year-old IDUs from Plymouth, UK. It investigates a range of injecting experiences, such as initiation into drug use, knowledge of harms and harm reduction strategies and the interviewees’ perception of such practices. Results are presented from five in-depth semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the data indicated that peers play a significant part in injecting, particularly in terms of initiation and acquired knowledge. Also, it appears that knowledge does not necessarily lead to behaviour change, with some young people choosing to adopt high-risk practices despite knowing the potential consequences. This supports previous study findings in relation to young people's knowledge and associated behaviour, but also highlights the value placed on peers and their influence, particularly during the initial stages of an injecting ‘career’.     

“Everyone can loosen up and get a bit of a buzz on”: Young adults,alcohol and friendship practices

In countries with liberalised alcohol policies, alcohol harm reduction strategies predominantly focus on young adults’ excessive drinking harms and risks. However, research shows such risks are largely irrelevant for young adults, who emphasise the sociability, release, pleasure and fun of drinking. Friendship is a central part of their lives and an integral part of their drinking experiences. This study aimed to explore everyday friendship practices, drinking, and pleasure in young people's routine and shared social lives. Twelve friendship discussion groups were conducted in urban and non-urban New Zealand, with 26 women and 25 men aged 18–25 years. Our Foucauldian discursive analysis enabled us to identify how the young adults drew on drinking as ‘friendship fun’ and ‘friends with a buzz’ discourses to construct drinking as a pleasurable and socially embodied friendship practice. Yet the young adults also drew on ‘good always outweighs bad experiences’ and friendship ‘caring and protection’ discourses to smooth over disruptive negative drinking experiences. Together these discourses function to justify young adults’ drinking as friendship pleasure, minimising alcohol harms, and setting up powerful resistances to individualised risk-based alcohol-harm reduction campaigns. These findings are discussed in terms of new insights and implications for alcohol harm reduction strategies that target young adults.     

“Bed Bugs and Beyond”: An ethnographic analysis of North America's first women-only supervised drug consumption site

BackgroundAttention to how women are differentially impacted within harm reduction environments is salient amidst North America's overdose crisis. Harm reduction interventions are typically ‘gender-neutral’, thus failing to address the systemic and everyday racialized and gendered discrimination, stigma, and violence extending into service settings and limiting some women's access. Such dynamics highlight the significance of North America's first low-threshold supervised consumption site exclusively for women (transgender and non-binary inclusive), SisterSpace, in Vancouver, Canada. This study explores women's lived experiences of this unique harm reduction intervention.MethodsEthnographic research was conducted from May 2017 to June 2018 to explore women's experiences with SisterSpace in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, an epicenter of Canada's overdose crisis. Data include more than 100 hours of ethnographic fieldwork, including unstructured conversations with structurally vulnerable women who use illegal drugs, and in-depth interviews with 45 women recruited from this site. Data were analyzed in NVivo by drawing on deductive and inductive approaches.FindingsThe setting (non-institutional), operational policies (no men; inclusive), and environment (diversity of structurally vulnerable women who use illegal drugs), constituted a space affording participants a temporary reprieve from some forms of stigma and discrimination, gendered and social violence and drug-related harms, including overdose. SisterSpace fostered a sense of safety and subjective autonomy (though structurally constrained) among those often defined as ‘deviant’ and ‘victims’, enabling knowledge-sharing of experiences through a gendered lens.ConclusionSisterSpace demonstrates the value and effectiveness of initiatives that engage with socio-structural factors beyond the often narrow focus of overdose prevention and that account for the complex social relations that constitute such initiatives. In the context of structural inequities, criminalization, and an overdose crisis, SisterSpace represents an innovative approach to harm reduction that accounts for situations of gender inequality not being met by mixed-gender services, with relevance to other settings.     

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

This article explores the micro-politics of recreational use of illicit ‘party drugs’ in a social network of young Australians. These young people often engage in extended sessions of concurrent alcohol and other drug use, and regularly emphasise the pleasures associated with this use. However, as well-integrated young people, they are also exposed to the discourses of non-using friends, family and the wider society, which represent illicit drug use as a potential moral threat. Some group members invoked the need for self-control in relation to illicit drug use and had developed a number of strategies to cease or regulate their use. However, they struggled to regulate pleasure and drew on popular understandings of ‘excessive’ drug use as indicative of flawed neo-liberal subjectivity. Other group members rejected the need for self-control, choosing instead to emphasise the value of unrestrained bodily pleasure facilitated by the heavy use of illicit drugs. These co-existing discourses point to the complex ways in which illicit drug users try to challenge the stigma associated with their drug use. Our analysis suggests that future accounts of illicit drug use, and harm reduction initiatives, need to be more attentive to the micro-politics of normalisation. How should harm reduction respond to those who articulate its ethos but pursue pleasure in practice? What should harm reduction say to those who reject regulation on the grounds that it stifles pleasure? Discussing ways to incorporate pleasure into harm reduction should be central to the future development of policy and practice.     

Risk control and rational recreation: A qualitative analysis of synthetic drug use among young urbanites in China

BackgroundTo fight against the rapid growth of synthetic drugs, the Chinese government has strengthened the controls and regulation, incorporated synthetic drugs into the new detoxification system, and changed the inconsistent governance of synthetic and traditional drugs. This, however, has not stopped the spread of synthetic drugs among young urbanites. While scholars have focused on the loopholes and defects of specific drug control regulations, ethnographic inquiries illustrate how and why control does not work, or is even resisted by young drug users.MethodsIn-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 28 individuals aged between 20 and 35, recruited from a cohort of synthetic drug users in a Shanghai drug rehabilitation centre. Audio-recorded interviews elicited accounts of their daily experiences of drug use as well as their perspectives on the impact of the government's new drug control policies.ResultsThe main themes voiced by our respondents include: (1) synthetic drugs are not addictive, and are used to feel ‘high’; (2) synthetic drugs are used to achieve their goals, which are otherwise impossible through mainstream means; (3) users are confident that they will be able to manage the use of synthetic drugs without harm to themselves; (4) their worries concern administrative punishment rather than consequences to health.ConclusionThe participants of this study did not support the government's attempts to control the use of synthetic drugs. They viewed their use as rational recreation under the perceived boundaries of ‘acceptable risks’. Even in the context of severe control, synthetic drugs have strong appeal to youths. Drug policy should acknowledge the experiences of users and consider the socio-cultural contexts of youth drug-taking. The personal experience of participants could help improve the Chinese Drug Control Act and regulations.     

Still “at risk”: An examination of how street-involved young people understand,experience, and engage with “harm reduction” in Vancouver’s inner city

BackgroundVancouver is an international leader in implementing interventions to reduce harms related to drug use. However, street-involved young people who use drugs continue to be vulnerable to overdose death, hepatitis C (HCV) infection, and high rates of syringe sharing. To better understand this in the context of the intensive public health response, we examined how young people, who are involved in the ‘street drug scene’, understood, experienced and engaged with harm reduction.MethodsTwelve semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2013 with 13 young people (ages 17–28) recruited from the At-Risk Youth Study, a prospective cohort of street-involved and drug-using young people. These interviews were embedded within a larger, eight-year program of ethnographic research and explored participants’ understandings of harm reduction, their use of specific services, and their ideas about improving their day-to-day lives. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and a thematic analysis was performed.ResultsYoung peoples’ ideas about harm reduction were diverse and expansive. They articulated the limitations of existing programs, indicating that while they are positioned to reduce the risk of HIV and HCV transmission, they offer little meaningful support to improve young peoples’ broader life chances. Young people described strategies to mitigate risk and harm in their own lives, including transitioning to drugs deemed less harmful and attempting to gain access to drug treatment. Finally, young people indicated that spatial considerations (e.g., distance from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside) strongly determined access to services.ConclusionsIn Vancouver, a large, well established harm reduction infrastructure seeks to reduce HIV and HCV transmission among street-involved young people. However, young peoples’ multiple understandings, experiences and engagements with harm reduction in this setting illustrate the limitations of the existing infrastructure in improving their broader life chances.     

Enlightened hedonism? Independent drug checking amongst a group of ecstasy users.

BackgroundResearch indicates that a body of ecstasy users across the globe employ ‘home’ drug testing technologies to learn more about the content of their drugs – a process referred to throughout this article as independent drug checking (IDC). Whilst a small number of studies offer accounts of this process, they do so through a narrow lens of harm reduction, potentially overlooking wider socio-cultural factors which may affect this. In response, this article draws on Slavoj Žižek's political theory of the cultural injunction to enjoy, situating IDC in the wider political economy of neoliberal consumer capitalism to contextualise and interpret its use as integral to pleasure and leisure.MethodsThis empirical study documents the thoughts and experiences of a group of UK ecstasy users who independently use a privately owned drug-testing kit. Drawing on qualitative data generated through 20 semi-structured interviews, the article considers two research questions; what role did drug checking play in the group's drug journeys and leisure activities?; and is drug checking thought to be purposeful?FindingsFor this group of ecstasy users, issues of safety and self-responsibility interweaved with the pursuit of pleasure as they sought to enjoy their drug consumption, but in a way that navigated potential harms. IDC therefore served to maximise pleasure via its ‘guarantee’ of a prolonged, enjoyable, authentic consumer experience whilst simultaneously safeguarding wellbeing via its premise of more responsible and controlled consumption practices.ConclusionIDC allowed this group of drug consumers to partake in ‘enlightened hedonism’ – demonstrating their conformity to the imperatives of capitalism and its social norms. Despite recognising the limitations of IDC and disclosing potentially harmful outcomes, the group's engagement with capitalist markets provided a belief that investment in your consumer experience can both improve it and make it safer – premises that belie the empirical reality.     

Contextualising psychological distress among regular ecstasy users: The importance of sociodemographic factors and patterns of drug use

Introduction and Aims. Considerable concern has been raised about associations between ecstasy use and mental health. Studies of ecstasy users typically investigate varying levels of lifetime use of ecstasy, and often fail to account for other drug use and sociodemographic characteristics of participants, which may explain mixed findings. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between patterns of recent (last six months) ecstasy use and psychological distress among current, regular ecstasy users, controlling for sociodemographic risk factors and patterns of other drug use. Design and Methods. Data were collected from regular ecstasy users (n = 752) recruited from each capital city in Australia as part of the Ecstasy and related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS). Psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10). Data were analysed using multinomial logistic regression. Results. Seven per cent of the sample scored in the ‘high’ distress category and 55% in the ‘medium’ distress category. Patterns of ecstasy use were not independently associated with psychological distress. The strongest predictors of distress were female sex, lower education, unemployment, ‘binge’ drug use including ecstasy (use for >48 h without sleep), frequent cannabis use and daily tobacco use. Discussion and Conclusions. Regular ecstasy users have elevated levels of psychological distress compared with the general population; however, ecstasy use per se was not independently related to such distress. Other factors, including sociodemographic characteristics and other drug use patterns, appear to be more important. These findings highlight the importance of targeting patterns of polydrug use in order to reduce drug‐related harm among regular ecstasy users.[George J, Kinner SA, Bruno R, Degenhardt L, Dunn M. Contextualising psychological distress among regular ecstasy users: The importance of sociodemographic factors and patterns of drug use. Drug Alcohol Rev 2010]     

Towards ‘Sensible’ drug information: critically exploring drug intersectionalities, ‘Just Say No,’ normalisation and harm reduction

Abstract

Aim: This article examines the impact of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on drug service interventions using a case study of professional practitioners in South East England. We assess how professionals seek to develop an innovative approach towards providing ‘sensible drug information.’

Methodology: The research methods include observations, and individual and collective ethnographic interviews with 13 professionals who work with young people across the region.

Results: The article theorises sensible because it is a key element in contemporary drug education with a harm reduction approach. Therefore, we take up this challenge and use the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, which according to Mazzei and McCoy ‘prompts the possibilities of new questions and different ways of thinking research’. We identify a series of drug intersectionalities between ‘traditional’ illegal drugs and NPS and through social class differences between young affluent and more socially disenfranchised drug users. This article assesses the delivery of ‘sensible drug information’ as part of a harm reduction approach, which may not always be supported by other agencies. In responding to these challenges we explore Deleuze’s ideas as a foundation for ‘sensible’ drug information which incorporates Matza?s theory of drift, to explain young people?s changing pattern of drug consumption.     

‘Silk Road’, the virtual drug marketplace: A single case study of user experiences

Background: The online promotion of ‘drug shopping’ and user information networks is of increasing public health and law enforcement concern. An online drug marketplace called ‘Silk Road’ has been operating on the ‘Deep Web’ since February 2011 and was designed to revolutionise contemporary drug consumerism. Methods: A single case study approach explored a ‘Silk Road’ user's motives for online drug purchasing, experiences of accessing and using the website, drug information sourcing, decision making and purchasing, outcomes and settings for use, and perspectives around security. The participant was recruited following a lengthy relationship building phase on the ‘Silk Road’ chat forum. Results: The male participant described his motives, experiences of purchasing processes and drugs used from ‘Silk Road’. Consumer experiences on ‘Silk Road’ were described as ‘euphoric’ due to the wide choice of drugs available, relatively easy once navigating the Tor Browser (encryption software) and using ‘Bitcoins’ for transactions, and perceived as safer than negotiating illicit drug markets. Online researching of drug outcomes, particularly for new psychoactive substances was reported. Relationships between vendors and consumers were described as based on cyber levels of trust and professionalism, and supported by ‘stealth modes’, user feedback and resolution modes. The reality of his drug use was described as covert and solitary with psychonautic characteristics, which contrasted with his membership, participation and feelings of safety within the ‘Silk Road’ community. Conclusion: ‘Silk Road’ as online drug marketplace presents an interesting displacement away from ‘traditional’ online and street sources of drug supply. Member support and harm reduction ethos within this virtual community maximises consumer decision-making and positive drug experiences, and minimises potential harms and consumer perceived risks. Future research is necessary to explore experiences and backgrounds of other users.     

Alcohol policy and harm reduction in Australia

With consultations having been held across Australia this year as part of the process of developing a new National Alcohol Strategy, it seemed timely to invite my colleagues from the National Drug Research Institute who are experts in the alcohol field to write this Harm Reduction Digest. The authors have canvassed a range of alcohol policy options and discussed their effectiveness in reducing harm for what is arguably Australia's number one drug problem. Australia's response to alcohol and other drug problems has, historically, been based on ‘harm minimization‐incorporating supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction’. At this time where the policy options for alcohol are being set for the next 5 years in a climate of ‘small government’, removing restrictions of ‘fair competition’ in business and a belief in the free market, what does the research have to say about recommended policies and strategies to reduce alcohol‐related harm?     

Self,meaning, and culture in service design: Using a hermeneutic technique to design a residential service for adolescents with drug issues

This paper aims to contribute to a relatively untheorised and unresearched area of adolescent drug and alcohol literature—designing residential services. In a context in which the researcher was given the ‘hands on’ task of designing a model residential service for adolescents with drug issues in the Australian state of Tasmania, it explores techniques that might be useful to understanding and placing young people's views at the centre of service design. The paper begins with discussion of the international literature on residential service design for adolescents with drug issues, and the nature of a Tasmanian service design project. It then explores young Tasmanians’ idealisations of residential services needed for youth with drug issues. These young people offered their thoughts along five major dimensions of the operationalisation of a residential service: service mission, activities and programs, location of the service, nature of staff, and service rationale or benefits. Their comments were analysed using a hermeneutic technique exploring the ‘life-worlds’ suggested by their vision of the ideal residential service. Youth data are contrasted with the broad findings of interviews with adult professionals in Tasmanian youth services to question the assumptions implicit in research, policy and practice at the international level.     

Differentiated normalization and drug transitions among rural youth in Ireland

Prevalence surveys in Ireland indicate an increased trend of youth drug use with rural areas reporting comparable drug availability and prevalence of use in urban settings (Currie, C., Nic Gabhainn, S., Godeau, E., Roberts, C., Smith, R., & Currie, D. (Eds.). (2008). Inequalities in young people's health: HBSC international report from the 2005/2006 survey. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe). Few studies have explored the contexts and meaning of drug use on rural youth transitions in terms of increased drug prevalence, recent influx of rural drug activity, normative tolerance of recreational drug consumption and fragmentation of traditional rural communities. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 220 young people (15–17 years), and 78 service providers in a rural area of Ireland, in order to yield contextualized narratives of their experiences of drug use and achieve a wider exploration of processes, drug transitions and realities of rural youth. The thematic analysis of the research described varied pathways, attitudes and typologies of rural youth drug use, ranging from abstinent, recreational and moderated to maturing out. The research suggests support for a ‘differentiated’ normalization theory (Shildrick, T. (2002). Young people, illicit drug use and the question of normalisation theory. Journal of Youth Studies, 5, 35–48) in terms of consumerist and normative rural youth drug use transitions in their negotiation of risk within integrating rural and urban dichotomies. In conclusion, it is recommended that drug education programmes need to situate localized rural drug taking behaviours within a wider understanding of rural community life.     

Making up a new drug user from depenalization to repenalisation of drug users in Denmark

BackgroundIn 2004 the Danish parliament repenalised possession of illicit drugs for personal use after it had been depenalised for 35 years. This article analyses the introduction of a more repressive drug policy in Denmark by studying how drug use and drug users were problematized in two key government whitepapers and how this problematization articulated a more general problematisation of ‘a culture of intoxication’ among young Danes. The analysis also shows how the policy change involved a change of governmentality away from a welfarist and towards a neo-liberal governmentality. The analysis particularly focuses on the implications of these problematisations for the constitution of young drug users a ‘governable subjects’.MethodsThe article takes its inspiration from research that has applied governmentality theory to analyse drug policy and particularly how the governmentalities that drug policies articulate involve different subjectifications of drug users. Within this overall framework the article also takes inspiration from Carol Bacchi's post-structural approach to policy analysis to show the assumptions about young people, drugs and how to govern them before and after the policy change.ResultsThe new drug policy articulated new ways of problematising drug use and the young drug user. Drug use was no longer defined as more or less socially conditioned but as an individual choice made by a rational actor. Punishment for violating the drug legislation should make the drug user responsible for his or her transgressions and deter others from making similar transgressions.ConclusionResearch has shown that neo-liberal discourses can lead to more empowering and harm reduction oriented drug policies. This is not the case in Denmark. Here neo-liberal discourses led to a more repressive drug policy. Briefly accounting for some of the lived effects of the new drug policy, the article shows how socially disadvantaged parts of the Danish population bears the burden on the more punitive drug policy. This more repressive drug policy goes against the trend in several other European countries that have become less repressive. However, even if Danish drug policy has become more repressive, the legal measures taken against drug users in Denmark are still fairly ‘mild’ compared with the legal measures taken against drug users in other countries.     

Healing the hurt amid the drug war: Narratives of young urban poor Filipinos in recovering families with parental drug use

BackgroundThis qualitative study explores the stories of young urban poor Filipino family members living with recovering parental drug users who turn themselves in to local authorities and completed theKatatagan Kontra Droga sa Komunidad (KKDK). This is a community-based rehabilitation program during the Philippine government’s anti-illegal drugs campaign.MethodsYoung urban poor family members living with parental drug use were interviewed (n = 13) and asked to narrate their experiences of parental drug use, surrender, and recovery. Their stories were analyzed using an integrated approach to narrative analysis guided by Rhodes’ framework (2002) of risk environment.ResultsNarrative work of participants focused on the stories of their parents’ drug use and recovery after surrendering. These stories show contexts which evoke the salience of prevailing discourse (i.e., cultural organization of Filipino family) and shaming practices in the community, and how these are embodied in the lives of our young participants. In re-telling their stories of parental drug use, our young participants (re) positioned themselves in three different ways: “I am used to it”, “I was neglected”, “I am angry and hurt”. After their parents completed the community-based rehabilitation program, they reconstructed their parents’ stories of recovery as a catalyst to improve their situation as a family unit (i.e., “their change is our change”).ConclusionSet against a national anti-illegal drug campaign, our findings contribute to a contextually nuanced perspective on the impact of parental drug use on children and families living in poverty. Policy makers and interventionists (e.g., mental health practitioners, social workers, psychologists) may need to consider young people’s stories as a struggle to exercise their agency when tailoring community-based programs to respond to the needs of younger people. Challenges to advocate for psychological, social, and structural ‘healing are discussed.