ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider the forms of action, including participation in wider criminal activities, that stemmed from illicit drug use on the Northern Scene. In doing this I draw on the rapid and gradual drug user typologies to explore the relationship between the different takeup rates and criminal activities such as supplying drugs and chemist burglary. Following on from the process of conversion to drug use this change introduced a need to solve the problem of obtaining supplies. The illegal status of the drugs created a barrier, through fear of prosecution, that may have been reduced by the assurances given by other users, but interpretation of the law was also affected by the experiences, knowledge and expectations of the person involved. In other words, involvement raised problems that were solved according to the culturally acquired means available. The most fundamental problem stemmed from the illegal status of amphetamines, which compromised the status users:
In making the activity guilty, Leviathan bedevils the subject as he proceeds and thus is partly compensated for its gross failure to deter. Gradually, the mistake of innocent affiliation is rectified. Under an authority more weighty than his own, the subject will come to act as if innocent affiliation with guilty activity is untenable – even if he does not see it in precisely that way and despite the fact that he and his collaborators may claim to see little guilt in the activity. Ban bedevils the subject in a very concrete way. Working arduously, it virtually guarantees that further disaffiliation with convention will be a concomitant
of affiliation with deviation; put slightly differently, that the scope or range of disaffiliation will surpass or go beyond the amount implicit in the deviation itself. The logic of ban creates the strong possibility that the subject will become even more deviant in order to deviate. (Matza, 1969: 147-8)
The possibility which Matza outlines can be applied to both user groups, though the differing forms of activity these two groups became involved in need broader explanation. This chapter uses the rapid/gradual distinction to explore whether these factors appear to have any bearing on the types of activities the members of these groups became involved in.
