Illegal Leisure Revisited

This book updates the progress into adulthood of the cohort of fourteen-year-olds who were recruited and tracked until they were eighteen years old. Illegal Leisure (1998) described their adolescent journeys and lifestyles, focusing on their early regular drinking and extensive ‘recreational’ drug use.


This new edition revisits these original chapters, providing commentaries around them to discuss current implications of the original publication, plus documenting and discussing the group at twenty-two and twenty-seven years of age. Illegal Leisure Revisited positions the journeys of these twenty-somethings against the ever-changing backdrop of a consumption-oriented leisure society, the rapid expansion of the British night-time economy and the place of substance use in contemporary social worlds. It presents to the reader the ways in which these young people have moved into the world of work, long-term relationships and parenthood, and the resulting changes in the function and frequency of their drinking and drug-use patterns. Amid dire public health warnings about their favourite intoxicants, and with the growing criminalisation of a widening array of recreational drugs, the book revisits these young people as they continue as archetypal citizens in a risk society.


The book is ideal reading for researchers and undergraduate students from a variety of fields, such as developmental and social psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural and health studies. Professionals working in criminal justice, health promotion, drugs education, harm reduction and treatment will also find this book an invaluable resource.