Key ingredients of Drug Scares

Question 1

Kernel of truth

Answer 1

People everywhere in different cultures have been taking different chemically altering substances for so long, so how can we claim that this is problem?

Question 2

Media Magnification

Answer 2

Blows up statistics and stories to create “moral panic”. Media tends to dramatize drug problems.

Question 3

Politico-Moral Entrepreneurs

Answer 3

(powerful people) politics create these drug scares and “something must be done” belief.

• entrepreneurs had interests of their own (often financial) which had little to do with drugs
• use drugs to distract the form other public problems which they would otherwise have to take some responsibility

Question 4

Professional interest groups

Answer 4

these kinds of groups such as churches, scientists and law enforcement agencies state these so called problems. Then try to promote a solution for this problem.

• name what is wrong and prescribe solution

Question 5

Historical Context of Conflict

Answer 5

the presence of conflict such as WW1, immigration, and impoverishment lead to the prohibition because they needed to scapegoat a way for these problems. Immigrants were bringing this alcohol in with them which lead to the criminalizing of alcohol.

Question 6

Linking a form of drug use to a “dangerous class”

Answer 6

Drugs are inanimate and don’t have consequences unless ingested by humans. So the drug scares are pointed towards the groups who use the drugs and then pinned as a threat by the powerful group.

Question 7

Scapegoating a drug for a wide array of public problems

Answer 7

blaming a drug or it alleged effects for a variety of social ills that are typically only indirectly associated with it.