Young people "are at the centre of many contradictions that represent demanding challenges to contemporary youth. With the respect to the topics under our study, the first contradiction concerns the fact that drugs are prohibited, but also largely available and used, even within the criminal justice system. This creates two main problems. The first is that drug proximity makes it difficult for those who want to quit or reduce their use. The second is the perception that using drugs is a normalised behavior which leads young people to believe that it is not possible to run into legal problems, not only with respect to personal use but also to selling cannabis to friends.

The second contradiction results from the discrepancy between the importance of self-affirmation, hedonism, and accumulation of goods and the lack of opportunity for financial and personal fulfilment available to young people. Both drug use and offending can therefore be understood as results of the gaps between expectation and reality, echoing Merton´s paradigm of deviant behaviors  as the disjuncture between cultural goals and legitimate means for reaching them.

In this sense, if high levels of inequality are still meaningful in explaining young people´s involvement in so-called deviant behaviours and the ways in which drug policy takes a role in reproducing them, relative advantaged young people are also at risk, and possibly more so now than in the past for reasons that are inherent in contemporary societies and lifestyles."

Sara Rolando, Franca Beccaria, Karen Duke: Trajectories of drug involvement among young people in contact with criminal justice systems in six European countries.
In: Chatwin, Potter, Werse (Eds) Who? Variation and distinction in the European drugs landscape. Pabst, Paperback ISBN 978-3-95853-722-4, eBook ISBN 978-3-95853-723-1