Describe the use of drugs in the female gang

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Both male and female gang members (and many nonmembers living in the same areas) spend a lot of their time "partying," "kicking it," and just "hanging out," and the use of drugs and alcohol is common. Moore's study of girl gangs in East Los Angeles reveals drugs to be a major problem. She noted that heroin has been a consistent feature of Chicano life for many years. Moore commented that in the 1980s, there was a heroin epidemic that was barely noticed in the press, no doubt because of the focus on crack cocaine. The lifestyle that revolved around the use of heroin was known as the tecato lifestyle. As the life history of one gang member revealed, this was a life filled with a sporadic work history and characterized by frequent jail and prison terms. By the age of 20, about half of the male gang members studied—but less than 25 percent of the females—were using heroin. By this age, most had already been labeled tecatos by their gang and had withdrawn into their own subculture. To give an idea of the importance of heroin in their lives, Moore reported that 39 percent of the men and 16 percent of the women mentioned "heroin, drugs, narcotics" as being "the major happening during their teens" and "it was during their teens that they were initiated into the world of heroin and its usually disastrous life consequences" (Moore, 1991: 107).