Sociological Effects Of War On Drugs

The deviance that I choose to focus on for this writing assignment is drug use. I’m aware that it seems like a bit of a cop-out since our discussion topic was also on this subject, however, I feel that this is a topic that is in the forefront of peoples’ minds, particularly based on the fact that Florida is conducting a vote on Amendment 2 reference the legalization of marijuana. For a multitude of years, the country has been waging a war, a war on drugs. Although the war on drugs started in the late 1970’s it become predominate in the 1980’s with the mantra “Just say no” preached to children on a daily basis. As a child of that era, I can still remember hearing it constantly. Yet here we are, nearly 40 years later and drugs still remain

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s website, of the 773,037 arrests in Florida in the year 2015 114,988 arrests (14.9%) were for drug-related offenses, second only to the miscellaneous category which encompasses all crime that didn’t fit another label (“Florida Department of law enforcement - UCR arrest data,” n.d.). What this data seems to tell me is that society needs to stop looking at drug use as solely a criminal issue and start looking at it from a sociological viewpoint. In this vein I feel that two of the theories looked at in this section could help society as a whole understand the what can lead a person to start taking drugs and what factors lead to a person’s continued drug use (besides the physical addictive qualities of drugs, a good point for a different class). The two theories that we studied this week that I feel relate to the explanation of drug use are the differential association theory and the

According to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids website the top two reasons given for trying drugs for the first time are other people and popular media (“Top 8 reasons why teens try alcohol and drugs - partnership for drug-free kids,” n.d.). Working hand in hand with the differential association theory is psychologist Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. Social learning theory is based on the concept of observational learning, people learn by observing the behaviors of those around them and mimic those behaviors (“Bandura - social learning theory,” 2011). Combining that theory with differential association means that those around deviant behavior will observe and absorb the behavior, accepting it as their new norm and emulating that behavior. Therefore, those continually exposed to drug use will begin to see this as the normative behavior, accepting and adopting it for themselves. There is a direct correlation between the amount of exposure and the prevalence of deviant behavior. The realization of this correlation is part of what is leading the push for changes in drug laws. People are beginning to realize that while confining a drug user to jail does punish the drug user, it also forces them to observe and socialize with other deviants, not just other drug users, thereby exposing them to new and perhaps worse deviant behaviors for them to assimilate. This