Social and Psychological Factors in Narcotics Addiction

Abstract

Narcotics addiction is both a psychophysiological state and a social category. It is a product of behavior learned within a social context and cannot be adequately understood apart from that context. The prevalence and consequences of drug addiction in any society depend as much upon the social and legal definitions placed upon the nonmedical use of narcotics as upon the nature and effects of narcotics or the nature of persons who become addicted. These definitions generally evolve in harmony with the general orientations of the society toward various types of experience, though in some instances, they may be imposed by groups having special interests in and concerns about the problem of narcotics use and addiction. In contemporary North America, narcotics addiction tends to be regarded with horror. The dope fiend and the drug peddler are subject in the popular mind to the same loathing and abhorrence that attaches to the sex maniac. The addict's apparent lack of will power and rejection of goals other than the support of his drug habit are utterly antithetical to the Protestant ethic, with its injunction to moral responsibility and striving. Intensifying the strong social disapprobation of the addict has been the change in legal definition attaching to drug use and drug possession since passage of the Harrison Act in 1914.1 The maintenance of addiction now requires that one be a criminal, whereas addicted persons could previously obtain their drugs at very low cost through legitimate drug channels. This action was, of course, designed to protect the population against the dangers of addiction through innocent medicinal use or self-experimentation with narcotic drugs. Coupled with the new legal definition of drug use, however, came the designation of the addict as enemy by enforcement personnel and the solidifying of underworld ties and identifications on the part of many addicts. Thus, stereotypes of the addict were reshaped and widely circulated and, to a degree, they were confirmed by the subsequent responses of addicts forced to work out new modes of survival. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore the