Juvenile drug use and delinquency: youths' accounts of their trajectories.

This study focuses mainly on youths' opinions about their delinquency and drug use trajectories. A qualitative approach was taken for this phenomenological research. The life account method was used to conduct a total of 62 interviews: 36 boys and 26 girls recruited in youth detention and addiction treatment centers, youth centers, high schools, and on the streets of three cities in Quebec between 1996 and 2002. Thematic analysis was used, and the deviant trajectories of the youths are broken down into five stages. Our study provides an incomplete view of these youths' more or less deviant trajectories. It would be interesting to do a follow-up study.