ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which drug/alcohol use has been presented to construct an image of the ‘pathological poor’ and how these problematisations have influenced policy. It is argued that it is social status which determines how much people are demonised rather than their pattern of drug/alcohol use. In turn, such ideas, framing perceptions of and policies towards social groups, are set within overarching paradigms of social, economic and political arrangements. These have varied from welfare state, to malign or benign neoliberalism, to the currently rising populism. Recent dominant frames of neoliberalism and populism assume that poverty is not the result of structural forces but of individual behavioural choices. Scapegoating and stigmatising, linking the poor to excessive use of drink and drugs, have functioned to justify punitive measures and exclusionary practices. Sometimes, however, these images and their associated policies have been successfully resisted. To illustrate this, the role of the media is examined and the chapter reviews proposals for compulsory drug testing of recipients of social assistance in the UK, the United States and Australia; the category ‘troubled families’ and its place in policy shifts in the UK; and the reframing of drug use from ‘welfare queens’ to the ‘diseases of despair’ in the United States.
