ABSTRACT
Drugs and drug users provide a rich source of myth, fascination and misinformation. As Marek Kohn has recently argued, heroin ‘acts as a sign under which some of the deepest concerns of a people can gather. Social Service departments, like other welfare services, are faced with the task of organising priorities under increasing fiscal and ideological stringencies. At the same time, they are faced with a new area of work, that of problem drug use. This extra pressure is dealt with in the same way as other demands upon the service: by definition and allocation of work that afford both agency and worker some sense of control over what they are dealing with. In 1926, the Rolleston Committee set down the principles underlying official attitudes to drug users in this country, and laid the foundation for what has been seen by other countries as the liberal and humane ‘British system’.
