Young people, recreational drug use, and safer practices in a changing world: Futuring harm reduction

This dissertation is grounded in the experiences of young people’s recreational drug use in Amsterdam and London, highlighting how they pursue pleasure, manage risk, and care for one another through harm reduction from below and above. Using qualitative methods, it challenges punitive logics and stigmatizing accounts, uplifting youth agency and expertise. It attends to how shifting social conditions have reshaped patterns of use and care, and introduces futuring harm reduction as a framework for imagining and enacting more just, compassionate, and pragmatic approaches to drug policy—rooted in the realities of those most affected.