For nearly thirty years the normalisation perspective has enlivened academic discourse and seen
ripples of influence go further into media politics and popular understandings of drugs. The
normalisation thesis advanced the idea that for many young people drug use might be an
unremarkable part of growing up rather than a sign of deep pathology and a leisure option to
be rationally selected alongside other hedonistic and somewhat edgy pursuits. While cannabis
might be the drug most associated with normalised drug use the normalisation perspective was
also closely tied to a rave scene powered by synthetic stimulants and psychedelics. The social
place of drugs goes beyond factors related to individuals and their access to drugs as well as
their tendencies to try drugs or to use them more frequently. Normalisation also relates to the
extent that those who do not use drugs tolerate various forms of drug use amongst their friends
acquaintances colleagues and family members as well as wider society. How are drug talked
about in the news media on social media in films on Netflix productions and in politics and
how has since been changing in the last three decades? The early scholarship focused on the
situation in the United Kingdom subsequent research including much that is contained in this
book has broadened its scope to understanding the social place of drug use across Europe. This
addition to the series of books produced by the European Society for Social Drug Research
(ESSD) explores the social situation of drug use in Europe through a collection of chapters
which feature both recent empirical research and essays theorising the status and nature of
normalised drug use in Europe. While the original normalisation research told us how the status
of drug use in the 1980s and 1990s was different to that of the 1960s and 1970s this book
adopts a critical and European focus to ask what has happened since then moving the beyond the
original centres of normalised drug use and asking what normalisation means and what the
implications of this paradigm for understanding drug use might be.
