A term for a person with a substance use problem – usually an opiate-based substance use problem and usually a person who injects drugs. Various explanations having been given for its roots in 1920s American slang. Not all of these are explicitly derogatory; for example, there is a theory that the term stems from the fact that people with an opiate problem used to collect and sell scrap metal i.e. junk. Another theory, obviously racist in origin, is that they used heroin that was imported by Chinese people – and the term originally was a term for people who were Chinese (i.e. someone who sails in a junk).
More obviously, the term is simply derogatory and a synonym for trash or rubbish. Whatever its origin, the term was popularised in the sixties partly by William Burroughs’ autobiographical novel originally published in 1953.
In current usage, the term is almost always derogatory and offensive or at least dismissive. While some people who have or have experience of problem drug use may refer to themselves in such terms, for others to do so is commonly regarded as offensive and stigmatising.
The term is now popularly applied to people involved in all kinds of behaviour and not only drug use (see addiction).
The term is still used in the print media usually to refer to an individual who has drug problem who has also been accused or convicted of a crime sometimes completely unrelated to their use of substances. In these circumstances it deliberately stigmatises the individual and also stigmatises people who have a drug problem and people who use drugs.