ABSTRACT
The use of drugs to create a sense of well-being has been a feature of many
cultures throughout the centuries. Within our own culture the use of alcohol
and tobacco has been quite acceptable for many years, although health
concerns around the use of tobacco are now greatly reducing its
acceptability. For almost as long, the use of illicit drugs has also been an
accepted part of life for the literary elite, as Thomas De Quincy’s Confessions
of an English Opium-eater testifies. However, in the past forty years the use of
illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis has shown a dramatic
increase and has become so endemic that in certain parts of western culture
such drug use must be considered the norm. Images of drug use constantly
press upon us, and part of that image is of drug abuse being routine among
the young; but is this really the case?
