SOCI 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Caffeine, Nicotine, Social Influence
7 Apr 2015
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How can drugs be viewed as a personal problem. Social stressors that make drug use more likely, causal factors of why people use drugs. Demands of our current life, stress of poverty, unemployment leading people to sue drugs and alcohol. Drug : any substance that causes a biochemical reaction in the body. Definitions of legal or illegal drugs usually depend less on its chemical properties and more on surrounding economic, social, and political factors. We only criminalize drugs that are the most serious and the most damaging. Prior to 1900s, drugs were not a criminal act. The social historians point to the criminalization of drugs. How serious and destructive are these drugs, a lot of the criminalization of these drugs is a function of particular ethnic or social group. In an effort to contain or control them, criminalize their normative behaviour.
