ABSTRACT
Declining circulations and the proliferation of alternative ‘new media’ sources of news might lead one to question whether newspapers should continue to be regarded as significant examples of popular culture. But the role of the newspapers in popular culture cannot be assessed simply in terms of circulation figures; newspapers remain important because of the way in which they contribute themes, phrases, imagery, inferential frameworks, to the circulation and reproduction of popular ideas. Journalism is still part of, not separate from popular culture (Dahlgren 1992: 18). This chapter is concerned with the symbolic frameworks that organise the representation of substance misuse, or illicit drug consumption, in national newspapers. Surprisingly, there are relatively few recent textual studies of the ways in which the consumption of different substances is represented in news discourse, one exception being Giulianotti (1997).
