Night Clubbing: Drugs, Clubs and Regulation

This book provides a vivid account of drug use and drug dealing in club land in modern urban Britain, drawing on the author’s experience of working in a London night club. It opens up the real world of the night-time economy, exploring the workings of a criminal door firm working in a large night club with a particular focus on the role of recreational drug use. The mechanics of the drugs trade within the night-time economy are described from the perspective of the key actors, and new light is shed on the way users of these clubs perceive and justify their often risky leisure choices. In broader terms the book seeks to re-work our understanding of the night-time economy and the role drugs play within it. Instead of characterizing these trends as uniformly negative it argues that this dance drug subculture presents a risky, but less violent alternative to the mainstream. It explores both the different strategies of regulation taken towards these developments, and the normative and practical problems associated with other current approaches. Overall it provides a highly readable vindication of the ethnographic approach.