In the '60s it was the sometimes amphetamine-aided mods and rockers clashes that outraged the nation for a few years before interest faded. Similarly a moral panic over solvents spread throughout the UK from the mid-'70s apparently faded in the '80s, leaving a legacy of damaging misconceptions. "Shocking" punk sniffers and "shocked" adults joined in mutual provocation, raising the temperature of public reaction and making sniffing a prime element in punk's stock of shock-tactics. Richard Ives explains how this unlikely alliance elevated glue sniffing to public drug concern number one. (Member log-in required)

A survey of 3000 people conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) revealed that even for films rated 18, cinema audiences were more offended by scenes of drug use that sex and violence. (Member log-in required).

This article outlines the media’s presentation of drug use in the 1970s, describing stories of cannabis-crazed hippies and glue-sniffing kids, while ignoring the sleeping pill epidemic. (Member log-in required)

Article on 60s song lyrics about drug use which concludes that when, sooner or later, an urban child - who lives in the ordinary world, not in the pop world where a drug conviction can be shrugged off - is offered a marijuana cigarette or a dose of LSD, he will remember them not as something his health and hygiene teacher spoke warningly about, but as something Mick Jagger, or John Lennon, or Paul MacCartney has used and enjoyed.

Articles from the 1970s dealt mainly with drugs that spread in parallel with youth counter-culture. The mainstream press and the counter-culture press often express diametrically opposed views about drugs. Many mainstream young people's press avoided discussing the issue, which has been dramatized by the mainstream press as a whole.

Concluding that the history of temperance offers many options for the present, this report explores the culture of drinking, and how it could be changed. In the past, temperance helped create an ethos which would now be called ‘social capital’. The report explores whether this culture can be brought up to date.