ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a specific drugs education project in relation to the 'risk society'. It shows how discourses related to risk are already operating tacitly within drug education programmes, and the ways in which young people are being encouraged to evaluate personal and social risks related to substance use and abuse. The chapter outlines how schools and government agencies are hampered from implementing educational strategies based on risk because of social and cultural pressures. It draws on the ideas of Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Baumann to illuminate the ways in which young people are presented with substances as another life-style choice where to partake is to create a particular identity for oneself and conversely, to abstain is also to create an identity. The chapter argues that an approach to drugs education which takes seriously the theoretical perspectives of the risk society would be of benefit to many young people.
