Has illicit drug use become normalised in groups of Swedish youth? A latent class analysis of school survey data from 2012 to 2015.

backgroundIt is often assumed that illicit drug use has become normalised in the Western world, as evidenced for example by increased prevalence rates and drug-liberal notions in both socially advantaged and disadvantaged youth populations. There is accumulating research on the characteristics of young illicit drug users from high-prevalence countries, but less is known about the users in countries where use is less common. There is reason to assume that drug users in low-prevalence countries may be more disadvantaged than their counterparts in high-prevalence countries, and that the normalisation thesis perhaps does not apply to the former context.

aimThis article aims to explore to what extent such assertions hold true by studying the characteristics of young illicit drug users in Sweden, where prevalence is low and drug policy centres on zero tolerance. MATERIAL AND

methodWe draw on a subsample (

findingsIndications of social advantage/disadvantage such as peer drug use, early substance-use debut and truancy varied across groups, particularly between "Marijuana testers" (low scores) and "Polydrug users" (high scores).

conclusionsOur findings corroborate the idea that the majority of those who have used illicit drugs in the Swedish youth population have tried marijuana a few times only. We discuss whether or not the comparably large share of socially advantaged "Marijuana testers" in a comparably small sample of lifetime users can be interpreted as a sort of normalisation in a prohibitionist drug policy context.