International Journal of Drug Policy 12 (2001) 321 – 335 The role of folk pharmacology and lay experts in harm reduction: Sydney gay drug using networks Erica Southgate *, Max Hopwood National Centre in HIV Social Research, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sir Robert Webster Building, The Uniersity of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Accepted 3 July 2001 Abstract Controlled illicit drug use has received relatively scant scholarly attention. This article seeks to examine the phenomenon of controlled drug use among inner Sydney gay men by accounting for the range of social regulatory mechanisms that contribute to managed use. The article explores the socio-historical contexts in which such use is embedded and investigates the social norms of control that have developed. We argue that the folk pharmacology of Sydney gay men consists of a range of folk harm reduction strategies usually delivered by lay experts or ‘network nannies’. These nannies serve several functions including teaching initiates about the practices of controlled use. The concluding discussion considers potential problems regarding the role of nannies and implications for peer education. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Controlled drug use; Gay men; Folk pharmacology; Networks; Peer education; Qualitative research www.elsevier.com/locate/drugpo Introduction Historically, non-problematic or controlled illicit drug use has received relatively scant attention compared with problematic drug use (Sharp et al., 1991; Gamble and George, 1997). However, there are a number of stud- ies that have documented non-problematic drug use including the regulatory social mechanisms that contribute to the mainte- nance of control. For example, the seminal work of Zinberg (1977, 1983, 1984), Zinberg and Harding (1982) theorises how drug use rituals, social sanctions, drug-taking environ- ments and individual mind set are factors contributing to controlled use. Similarly, Maloff et al. (1982) illustrate how informal social controls operating within groups of users affect patterns of illicit drug consump- tion. Informal controls include such things as * Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-2-9385-6421; fax: +61- 2-9385-6455. E-mail address: e.southgate@unsw.edu.au (E. Southgate). 0955-3959/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0955-3959(01)00096-2