Iain McPhee Lecture
Thursday 27 August
''Scotland's hidden population of drug users''
Iain McPhee, lecturer in the University’s School of Social Sciences, delivered a lecture on Scotland’s ‘hidden’ population of drug users on Thursday 27 August at Dumfries Campus..
Iain has wide-ranging experience in the area of alcohol and drug studies and lectures on the University’s MSc in this discipline, provides specialist lectures at the Scottish Police College, and is also an expert witness in the use of controlled drugs in Scotland.
The lecture explored the social worlds (risk and identity) of drug users who are not in contact with treatment services. Addicts and service users are already a much- studied population, but research carried out by Iain investigates how a climate of moral and legal censure shapes the boundaries of risk of hidden populations of non- service users in Scotland. Mass media representations of the typical addict are also at odds with the research. This is partly due to a lack of empirical data that has been conducted with this ‘hidden’ population, and the fact that drug users in contact with legal and health services are over-represented from areas of deprivation, and over-represented in research.
