Gender, recovery and contemporary UK drug policy

Abstract

including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Gender, Recovery and Contemporary UK Drug Policy PurposeThe article provides a gendered reading of the 2010 UK drug strategy and draws out the implications of the new recovery paradigm for female drug users. DesignThe article explores the concept of recovery at a theoretical level, uncovering the taken-for-granted assumptions in the three overarching principles: freedom from dependence; well-being and citizenship. It also analyses the available quantitative and qualitativ access to recovery capital to explore the role gender might play in the journey to recovery. FindingsStrategic thinking around recovery in the UK is largely silent on gender. However, close scrutiny of the available, albeit limited, evidence base on female drug users and feminist scholarship on the principles of well-being and citizenship suggests the need to understand recovery against a backdrop Originality/value Recent analyses of contemporary UK drug policy have focused on the conflation of recovery with abstinence and the displacement of the harm reduction agenda. They have failed to draw out the implications for particular groups of drug users such as women.The pursuit of recovery-based drug policy is not peculiar to the UK so the article offers a case study of its gendered application in a particular national context.

Parents and substance use

“…Narrative analysis suggests that young people's shame regarding their parents' drug use and fear that their parents may be arbitrarily killed are constructed by young people as domestic problems to be dealt with by them alone. This resonates strongly with findings from other contexts, where responsibility for drug harms is centred on individuals, rather than enabling attention to the range of factors that interact to make communities vulnerable to these harms (Wincup, 2016). Crucially, this paper contrasts starkly with that of valentine and Smyth, demonstrating the important role of policy contexts in shaping the affective experience of families impacted by drug use.…”

Women as Co‐Offenders: Pathways into Crime and Offending Motivations

“…Three women indicated that drug addiction was both an offending motivation and a pathway into crime, reinforcing the already‐recognised link between drugs and offending behaviour (Surratt et al . ; Wincup ). All three women were very clear on the impact that drug‐taking had on their continued involvement in offending.…”

Life in Recovery: A Families’ Perspective

“…However, the term remains contested (e.g. Valentine, 2011; Wincup, 2016), and there is no equivalent definition for the recovery experience of the family member.…”