Party Animals By Kane Race Summary

The addict incidence of mental health disorders and substance misuse problems is terribly high. Compared with the non-indigenous population, the indigenous people of Australia occupied very high crime rate, indigenous peoples make up 33 per cent of the total population of Australia, while one out of every four prisoners in Australia indigenous peoples. Drug abuse is a serious issues, leading to poor mental health and high imprisonment rates(Calma & Dudgeon 2013).

A great deal of harm is caused by illicit drugs, particularly to dependant users. Drug use damages the user and diminishes an individual’s social cohesion. An individual’s dependency on illicit drugs places a heavy burden on the Australian legal system, welfare(Centrelink), the justice system(lawyers) and the medical system. The many burdens caused by the manufacture, supply and use of illicit drugs effect the efficiency of Australia. The Drugs misuse and trafficking Act 1985 (NSW) applies to over 240 drugs, including

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, society wasn’t the most accepting of places for people who were different from the “social norms”. Now I know, people today still struggle with trying to fit in and be “normal” but it was different. Being a gay man living in San Fransisco at the time, which had a large gay population, Richard Rodriguez had a hard time dealing with the discrimination he faced. Richard Rodriguez was an American journalist who wrote and published a memoir about his life as a gay man. In October of 1990, Rodriguez published his memoir “Late Victorians” in Harper’s Magazine, a critically acclaimed publication of the time. In his memoir, Rodriguez describes what it was like to realize he was gay and watch as the country changed to become a more accepting place. He does this by setting up how things can change and then explaining the actual ways things change for the gay population.

Throughout this essay the sociological imagination is used to analyse the historical, cultural and structural reasons for drug use and abuse. Within this parameter the sociological imagination is applied, using studies research conducted in the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia and the United States. The sociological imagination was defined by Charles Write Mills as a ‘quality of mind’. (Mills quoted by Germov, Poole 2007: 4 ) It is stimulated by an awareness to view the social world by looking at how one’s own personal problems and experiences form a relationship to the wider society. In Victorian society the majority of people believed there was no ‘drug problem.' (Berridge, 1999) The substances used in Britain at the time like opium

The articles by Roderick Ferguson (2004) in his book literally highlights the regulation that established sociological schools of thought impose upon the ‘queer people of color,’ or anyone who is different in terms of sexual orientation and non-white. In the very early part of the book, Ferguson depicts the imagery of a black drag-queen prostitute from Marlon Riggs’ ‘Tongues Untied.’ He goes on to describe the way capitalism, in general, and the American system in particular has conveniently excluded many like her – people of alternative sexual preferences with both African American culture and Leftist Liberal thought rooted in the heterogeneity. (Ferguson, 2004, p. 3). It is at this point that through the work of Chandan Reddy, Ferguson reminds the reader that the core of Leftist-Liberal Marxist thought revolves around the abolishment of race, gender and sexuality.

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

This essay is going to look at Howard Parker et al’s (1998) theory of ‘normalisation’ and critically evaluate whether or not it still relevant in contemporary society. The essay will begin by explaining the theory in relation to how and where it developed from. The essay will move on to focus on specific aspects such as globalisation and how certain issues have affected the ‘normalisation’ of recreational drug use. The focus will then move onto describing the seven dimensions of ‘normalisation’ that Howard et al (1998) developed; drug availability, drug

Pereira states that “around 85% of the Australian prison population serves time for drug related activities.” (Pereira, 2002, p. 154) That is a rather high rate of incidence in the prison population, which is directly impacted due to the War on Drugs. She also states that “for many women the effects of prison tend to be more negative than for men because women often have more to lose by going to prison.” (Pereira, 2002, p. 154) She further

In reference to this framework, Stanton’s (2005) article about youth drug-use in Australia appears to adopt many criteria following the British seven-stage processual model of moral panic. Firstly, it is evident that the emergence of a threat was identified in 1999 by O’Brien (1999, cited in Stanton 2005) when a major newspaper featured a headline image of a teenager injecting drugs. This drug-use incident was defined as a threat to societal values as it sparked widespread concern around the drug problem among Australian youth. Secondly, youth drug-use was presented in a stylised fashion, as an informed belief by mass media that drug-use is solely an individual problem where images and symbols of youth became associated with images of illicit drug-use (Stanton 2005: 51). In this case, drug-use among young Australians became a moral panic as a fear for youth

There was a great push for a non-judgmental approach that would ‘reduce physical, social and psychological risks to individuals who use drugs and to society as a whole’ (McCann & Temenos, 2015, p. 217). Never the less, this was a highly contested set of policy formulation across all levels of governance.

In ‘Party Animals: The Significance of Drug Practices in Materialisation of Urban Gay Identity’, Kane Race (2011) argues that the use of party drugs (typically psychostimulants) has contributed significantly to the formation and evolution of the identity of homosexual people. He also argues that progress made in liberating the queer community may now be under threat due to changes in the Australian Government’s attitude towards drug use. This essay will discuss the complex social function of drug use in gay communities, the movement from drug use as a source of cognitive escapism to hedonism and pleasure seeking, the potential therapeutic value of certain drugs and their role in providing comfort to a society traumatised by great loss due to

Not only has does the war on drugs targeted minorities and proved unsuccessful, once our peaceful people are in jail, the law continues to abuse us. Whatever the debates around the world and the stigma of drug use, we should not let an individual's drug use obscure the fact that forcing the mass incarceration of consenting activities of hundreds of millions of people destroy their right to human rights, including the right to health, privacy, and liberation of notion and practice, and the right of the pursuit of happiness only because others feel those people do not deserve it. The centrality of criminalising users means that in reality a war on drugs is to a significant degree, a war on drug users; a war on

In other words it can be said that the drug hysterias that sweep the US can be safely ignored if focus is instead on the ethical concerns of social marginalisation that cause the addictions and abuse such as poverty and racism (Room, 2005).

Currently drug abuse is the issue that has plagued almost all the societies in the world. This problem poses serious threat to the life of people both in developed and underdeveloped countries. There are different kinds of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, cannabis, hallucinogens, ecstasy, and methamphetamine and so on (McGeorge & Aitken, 1997). Young and age-old people largely use many of these drugs. People usually consider these drugs as a relief from their worries, but these drugs lead them towards addition and psychotic disorders that eventually destroy their health. Legislative authorities in almost every part of the world have been trying to save their generations from the abuse, but the use of these drugs never ended. However, these legislations help to minimize the numbers of drug users where their implementation is done properly (Hall et al., 2004). The aim of this research paper is to provide knowledge about the Cannabis Legalization in Australia and the people’s approach who favor or oppose this legalization. Cannabis drug use, impacts, cannabis legalization in Australia and its advantages and disadvantages will also

I have written this essay in response to the essay prompt Recreational use of soft drugs such as marijuana or ecstasy is less harmful than alcohol consumption and therefore should be decriminalised. In this essay I will talk about the effects that soft drugs have on society, and on adolescent youth. I will also talk about my position on this matter, and what I believe is the right course of action to take in regards to the essay prompt.