In this article I attempt to set down some starting points for the construction of ways of understanding alcohol and other drug use among young people that differ from those already established in the drug research field. I open with a discussion of the developmental model of “adolescence” and “youth,” arguably the dominant discourse in youth drug research; in particular, its focus on biology, the environment, and the acquisition of personal identity. I then focus on selected elements of the sociological, anthropological and historical literatures on young people that chart a very different set of empirical, analytical and theoretical concerns from those established by the “science” of development; namely, culture, social class, generational conflict, social organization, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, spatiality, subjectivity and Eurocentrism. I conclude by arguing that those from outside the dominant drug-research disciplines of epidemiology, medicine and psychology must continually press their case for the relevance of new ideas in order to contribute to a more open and theoretically dynamic field.
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