DRUG ABUSE: SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS
Compton, Thomas, Conway and Colliver (2005) have pointed out that three decades of research into drug use and abuse has identified several contributors to the problem. What this research has shown is that there are various clusters of contributing factors including: individual characteristics (genetic factors, high-risk behaviors), family variables (child abuse), community and neighborhood variables (high availability of drugs), and societal factors(policies and laws). Various theories have been proposed to explain why people use drugs including sociological and psychological theories. This paper examines both of these models of drug abuse and then relates them to crime.
Faupel, Horowitz and Weaver (2003) state that there two important sociological theories of drug abuse are: Anomie Theory, and Labeling Theory. Anomie Theory attributes drug abuse to the breakdown of societal norms and their inability to control the actions of people within a given society. The social norms that kept drug abuse to a limited and narrowly defined segment of society several decades ago have been slowly eroded leaving discrepancies between socially approved goals and the means of obtaining these goals. The theory holds that this frustration will lead people to abuse drugs or alcohol.
For example, social factors like busy parents, lack of mentors and role models, lack of good advice, and a highly materialistic philosophy of life that stresses on the need to gain more are some of the factors that compel underachievers and disillusioned people to seek and try drugs. This fact may be corroborated from the observation that most drug addicts take to drugs at a very young age: an age when they are most susceptible to the pressures of the society as shown by an internet article on this topic (Stocker, 1999).
Labeling theory, according to Faupel et. al (2003), states that those w
...