“A magnet for curious adolescents”: The perceived dangers of an open drug scene

During the summer of 2004 the police closed Plata, an open drug scene in the midst of Oslo. The most important argument for the closure was that the drug scene made it easier for curious, city-dwelling adolescents to start using drugs. This research sought to assess this assumption. Ethnographic research methods including twenty 2-hr field observations and qualitative semi-structures interviews were employed. Interviews were conducted with 30 adolescents in the centre of Oslo, as well as with 10 former drug users, three police officers and three field workers. We were also given access to police statistics and authorised to do our own analysis of the material. The most important result was that adolescents seemed rather to avoid than to be attracted to this open drug scene in Oslo. Based on the presentation of qualitative data we suggest that this was due to the social definition of the drug scene. Because they experienced a great social distance between themselves and the regulars at the open drug scene, adolescents seemed to avoid Plata. Moreover, the scene was symbolically associated with heroin and injection as the route of administration, which had low prestige among the adolescents. Despite these findings, adolescents’ recruitment to drug use was the key issue in the political debate following the closure. We point to the shared rhetorical interest among important institutional actors in framing the issue in this way. The argument was also embedded in widely shared public representations of adolescents and drug users as passive and irrational.