Student transitions into drug supply: exploring the university as a 'risk environment'

Abstract

Drug use, like much criminality, is often explored in relation to the journey into adulthood. Though young people are understood to commonly ‘grow out’ of crime, protracted transitions from adolescence into adulthood have brought about a new developmental phase where many young people are freer to engage in drug-related leisure and other forms of subterranean play in a period of extended adolescence. In this article, we look to this phase with focus upon those engaged in full time higher education and explore the extent to which entry into university and ‘studenthood’ enables particular changes in levels of involvement in recreational drug use and supply. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews undertaken with mainly ‘traditional’ undergraduate university students in South West England, this article seeks to explore the ways in which the structural circumstances of the university environment can produce favourable conditions for ‘turning points’, where university students transition into regular drug use and ‘social supply’. It is argued that the university can be understood as a specific ‘risk environment’ where certain cultural and environmental attributes including distance from guardians, the interconnected nature of the student populace, and financial insecurity can ultimately provide facilitative conditions for transitions into drug supply.