Twelve years ago, I wrote a book based on my research into street gang culture in the west of Scotland. I documented how teenage boys in socially deprived housing schemes frequently vied for territory and engaged in street violence for recreational purposes, often as a means of coping with the impact of poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation.

Now, I’m preparing to write a follow-up manuscript. I am revisiting the same housing schemes I first became familiar with in 2008 and exploring more contemporary issues facing young people.

As well as interviewing young people (mostly young men aged 14-21), I am also re-engaging some members of my earlier research sample (now in their late twenties and early thirties) to reflect on the ways that youth culture may have changed and evolved.

In the period since my original work, the west of Scotland has become home to numerous gang-related and violence- reduction intervention strategies. For example, the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit has implemented many innovative projects that have helped to drive down violent crime.

Glasgow City Council’s education director, Maureen McKenna, has been instrumental in reducing numbers of school exclusions and, in turn, halving violent youth crime in catchment areas by ensuring young people are at less risk of hanging around on street corners and getting involved in gangs.

In 2008, when I walked into the housing schemes in and around Glasgow, it was unusual not to hear about a gang fight that had taken place at the weekend. Now, it’s much more unusual to hear about one at all. One older participant in my new research is 28-year-old Darren*, whom I first met when he was just 16. During an interview with me, he recalled the “buzz” he always got from gang fighting when he was a teenager.

“There was adrenaline,” he explained, “it made you feel so hard … We’d feel like we were the big men, if you like.” But now, when he visits his old scheme, Darren sees a lot of changes. “The young team [now] …they’re no’ doin’ the same stuff … We were gang fighting and getting drunk … They’re too busy selling drugs.”

It appears that both the type of drugs available and the distribution patterns in the schemes have changed. “When I was younger, it was hash,” Darren told me, “[but] there was nae Class A stuff about … Now I go on Instagram and … there’s guys that are on it with daft names and it’s photos of coke [cocaine] and eccies [ecstasy].”

Unlike in 2008, almost all teenagers now have access to smartphones and popular social media sites such as Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram. These same sites provide a platform for online drug dealers, and teenage drug use has thus been made much easier. Echoing Darren, a recent report by The Daily Telegraph suggested that dealers often post pictures and videos of Class A drugs such as cocaine, ketamine and heroin, and encourage young people to contact them on encrypted messaging platforms, using emojis as a code to avoid detection. Once users make contact with the dealers, a meeting is arranged to hand over the drugs, or they can even be sent in the post.

The pressure to perform territorial violence on the streets has evidently been replaced by a pressure to perform as a resilient drug user at “gaffs” (house parties). Josh*, who is 17 and has been going to gaffs for several years, described the rules to me: “The rules of the gaff is, once you’re fully drunk, you need to snort coke to get sober again … You dae ‘whitey’ [turn white and vomit], [but] after you ‘whitey’ you feel better and then just go back on it again … Once you dae it, you get more respect for it.”

Anti-drugs lessons in schools

The purpose of the health and wellbeing area of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is to help young people develop the knowledge and understanding, skills, capabilities and attributes for mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing. Education Scotland draws attention to the need for teachers to encourage young people to talk about what they know about drugs, to share information that they might see on social media and consider the choices and consequences they might make in response to this.

Many young people I have been talking to recently have indicated that they first began to use cannabis when they were still at primary school. They began by smoking joints (cannabis rolled in paper) then gradually became enticed to progress to using “buckets” (filtration devices used for inhaling cannabis and other substances) and sometimes then to harder drugs.

Grace Robinson, an academic from the University of Leeds, has highlighted that the gradual shift in importation of cannabis from overseas to the cultivation of it within the UK has led to a greater degree of potency within the drug, which has been linked to psychotic disorders. The increasing normalisation of cannabis use among very young people, therefore, potentially puts young people at increased risk of later adverse mental health outcomes, as well as at risk of progressing to other drug use. Accordingly, I believe that primary teachers need to consider how they can begin to educate children about the specific risks associated with cannabis use as part of the first and second levels of CfE, as well as preparing them for the images and influences they become exposed to online.

Several young men talked to me about dealers taking them into other housing schemes to supply in order to increase their revenue. For instance, Josh indicated that dealers might on occasion take him on drives so he could do “drop-offs” in other areas. One other young lad, Callum*, told me that he knew a boy who regularly accompanied an older supplier in his car when he visited a large city in England to drop off and bring money back up to Scotland.

Some young men described how they had felt exploited by dealers and became more susceptible to it when they had been excluded from school. However, others, such as 15-year-old Ben, admitted that they were the ones who had approached older dealers to see if they could supply for them because they “wanted to make money”.

Living in an image-conscious culture had an influence on this, and some young men felt compelled to make large sums of money to maintain the pristine image that gave them street cred among their mates. As Jed* and Kenny* (both 15) said, “appearance is important … It shows a bit of your personality, what you wear”. Whereas in 2008, the lads in the schemes I met tended to be dressed in shell suits, in 2020, I find it more common to come across young men adorned in jackets made by Boss, Stone Island or Lacoste. And peer pressure is no longer confined to young people’s immediate friendship networks: social media means that they are comparing themselves to global images of fashion trends among celebrities and craving a lots of likes for their own selfies.

Choices for Life is a Police Scotland initiative aimed at raising awareness among young people aged 11-18 about how to deal with negative peer pressure, including the pressure to take drugs and/or to look a certain way on social media.

Together with PACE Youth Theatre, in Paisley, Choices for Life has produced a series of dramas called Someday, which tell the stories of young people struggling with peer pressure and the consequences that can result from it.

Secondary teachers drawing upon resources such as this can support young people in navigating their way around the pressures associated with consumerism. They can also support young people to avoid the pressure to take drugs, in turn addressing the health and wellbeing “experiences and outcomes” associated with fostering mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing.

However, I believe that teachers are also in a good position to spot the early indicators that young people may have become recruited as drug runners to enable dealers to expand their markets beyond local territories.

Where teachers notice a pupil who is turning up at school with unexplained acquisition of new designer clothes, who is demonstrating a significant decline in their academic performance, a change in their social networks and/or in their sense of emotional wellbeing, this may indicate that they have become exploited by local dealers.

Don’t bet on it

Intervening early, raising awareness of this and initiating open conversations with young people - along with their parents or carers - can be beneficial. In wider terms, delivering whole-school assemblies on the issue of drug supply networks, in collaboration with local community policing teams, can help to empower pupils with wider knowledge of the issue and allow them not only to consider their own behaviour and safety but that of their peers as well.

During my interviews, I have also identified that social media is increasing the likelihood of youth gambling. One youth worker, James*, drew attention to the preponderance of betting companies sponsoring Scottish football, such as 32 Red (which sponsors Rangers FC), Dafabet (Celtic FC), William Hill (the Scottish Cup) and Ladbrokes (the Scottish Professional Football League).

Young people, and particularly young men, are bombarded with images of these online betting companies during adverts. They are drawn to buying and selling players to create their “ultimate team” and trading “coins” on the online soccer game Fifa 20, as well as “skins” and guns on the online action game Fortnite. “If you’ve no’ got the best skins and the best guns and the best Fifa coins and best Fifa players … [you lose] popularity,” James observed. He also indicated that many young men he worked with often then progressed to spending more money on scratch cards and football coupons.

Fast Forward is a registered Scottish charity focused on supporting young people to make informed choices about their wellbeing and to live healthier lifestyles. Its gambling education toolkit helps practitioners better understand what problem gambling is, its consequences and its relationship with other risk-taking behaviours. Schools that work with Fast Forward can adopt a peer-education approach, where 16- to 18-year-olds can become trained to pass on harm-reduction messages to other pupils.

Secondary schools could use this approach to enable senior pupils to learn more about the risks associated with problematic online gaming and how this can become a precursor to addictive gambling behaviour; they can then begin to educate other young pupils both in their own schools and in feeder primary schools about the inherent risks.

As I continue my research, I’m encouraged by the significant reduction in the territorial violence that once blighted the west of Scotland but I am uncovering a range of new and emerging challenges.

The move from regular gang fights out on the streets to the accumulation of issues linked to the online environment means that schools need to adapt and find new approaches and resources to support the health and wellbeing of our young people.

However, schools also need to learn from established practices. Just as school exclusions put young people more at risk of becoming immersed in gang violence, so too can they provide a stimulus for youth drug use, drug supply and gambling.

More schools across the country need to apply education director McKenna’s well- established doctrine in Glasgow. Keeping young people in school - and adopting nurturing, preventative and early-intervention approaches - may just help us help young people to cope with the dark problems that the online world presents in 2020.

*Names have been changed

Ross Deuchar is a professor of criminology and criminal justice, and former assistant dean of education at the University of the West of Scotland. He tweets @rossdeuchar

This article originally appeared in the 27 March 2020 issue under the headline “Squaring up to the social media drugs scene”