Drugs at School: How the School Community Addresses the Problem within an Interactional Framework

Abstract

In autumn 1996, articles appeared in the Finnish newspapers about a vocational school where the sale and use of drugs were discovered; this was the beginning of the social construction of the school drug problem. This paper describes one part of the process that has taken place in the community since the public framing of the problem. The study set out to look at how the problem is constructed among the school staff members. The data consist of interviews with 24 staff members of the school in spring 1997. The analysis of the interview material revealed three discursive themes that the interviewees used to construct the drug problem: The first theme had to do with the invisibility of drugs; the second had to do with what the school could (not) do to address the challenge presented by its students; and the third concerned the tension between wanting to help transgressors and the requirement to punish them. The paper argues that the drug problem is closely linked with many of the interactional practices in the school community that have become taken for granted.