Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology, at the Department of Criminology, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. She has been researching drugs for over 25 years. Her interests revolve around: recreational drug taking, including why people take drugs and how their drug taking changes over the life course; dependent drug use, recently publishing about synthetic cannabinoids consumption among vulnerable populations; and creative research methods, especially arts-based and visual techniques. Since 1999, she has worked on the Illegal Leisure longitudinal study exploring changing drug patterns from adolescence to adulthood. The findings have been published in Illegal Leisure Revisited and Changing Lives, Changing Drug Journeys. Her recent projects include, a visual ethnography of where and how people store their recreational drugs in the home, which has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and a cross stitch public engagement project, creating, with people who use drugs and the public, cross stitches with empowering and harm reduction messages.
Session
Background: Prohibitionist drug policies have stigmatising effects on people who use drugs (PWUD), reinforcing social exclusion, casting them as ‘other’, and requiring them to conceal their drug taking identities and associated behaviours.
Objectives: Employing a novel - to drug policy scholars - sociology of secrecy theoretical framework, this paper explores, using a materialist lens, how social stigma is managed through drug storage strategies in the home. It addresses what is being kept secret, how, from whom and why.
Methods: The paper presents qualitative data collected using material and creative methods: object-centred interviews and visual (photo) ethnography. Ten recreational drug takers from England and Wales were recruited. An atypical sample, they ranged in age from 28-58, were middle class, mostly employed, and 6/10 were parents. The paper presents images and interview data which have been analysed thematically.
Results: ‘Drug secrets’ being kept in the home and made invisible through drug storage strategies were the possession of illegal substances and associated paraphernalia, and, if these were discovered, drug taking identities. The material properties of drug storage containers were important for keeping ‘drug secrets’. For example, glass jars concealed the smell of herbal cannabis. Objects and spaces worked in relation to each other to manage ‘drug secrets’. Their management was a tactic to avoid perceived social stigma.
Implications: Greater de-stigmatisation of drug use is necessary. Public conversations representing the range of PWUDs, including parents and professionals, and their motivations for recreational use could reduce stigma and challenge prohibitionist drug policies and ideologies.