Understanding Drug Use Among Blacks in England: A View From Practitioners in the Drugs Field

Data for this paper derive from the author’s observation and evaluation of a training course on the problem of substance misuse in the Black1 community and the effectiveness of mainstream drug treatment services in tackling drug use among Blacks. The training course was targeted at a wide range of Black professionals who worked directly or indirectly in the drugs field in the London borough with the highest Black population.2 The views expressed by the Black professionals in the course of the training moved beyond the narrow topic of substance misuse and treatment provisions to assessment and understanding of drug use from a socio-historical context, encapsulating, among other topics, issues of socioeconomic deprivation, crime, criminal justice, racial discrimination, and slavery. Incorporated in the Black professionals ’ views were suggestions on how to implement lessons learned from the training course toward effectively engaging Black drug users in drug treatment. It is the intention of this paper to illuminate the interplay between socio-historical factors and Black drug misuse as narrated by the Black professionals