Journal of Drug Issues

British narcotic policy and its medical approach has long been of interest to those concerned with narcotic policy in America. This paper examines the influences which went to form the medical approach in the period 1908–1926. The Hague Convention of 1912 committed Britain to a more extensive system of domestic control than the professional regulation of sale established in the nineteenth century. Yet pre-war discussions of further legislation were limited in their scope. It was the effect of an apparent war time “emergency” in 1916 which brought stricter regulation and more active state intervention.

The early 1920s saw a Home Office attempt to extend this penal approach and to exclude the medical profession from the position it occupied over narcotics. Home Office regulations and government legislation emphasised the non-professional attitude. But the profession, addiction specialists in particular, defended its role; the Home Office found it impossible to operate its policy without medical validation. The 1926 Rolleston Report marked a compromise between two influential elites and a further stage in the incorporation of professional influence in the machinery of government.

A historical dialectical model of deviance is presented and contrasted with the empiricist conception of unidirectional causation. This historical model, focusing on the interaction over time between culture or ideology and socially structured reality is used to organize data on marijuana use in America over the past 50 years. It is argued that only a historical model of this sort can adequately account for the changing ideology and reality of deviant phenomena, including the findings of and conclusions drawn from empiricist research.

Views of the creation and maintenance of social problems have largely omitted the influence of government agencies. An examination of one behavior (teenage drinking) reveals efforts by one government agency (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) to generate a social problem in the face of evidence which belies the inflammatory rhetoric. The difficulties of community agencies and parents of teenage drinkers in responding to the federal campaign exemplify the questionable nature of the government claims.

Both survey data and liver cirrhosis mortality data demonstrate the existence of a relationship between per capita consumption of alcohol and the prevalence of heavy alcohol use. The present paper reviews some of the explanations given for this relationship, and the so-called “contagion between persons” explanation is further developed. The empirical evidence for the basic assumptions of this theory is reviewed, and some predictions are derived and related to empirical facts.

In spite of the traditionally important role that the concept of “norms” has played in sociology, there is little agreement on how it should be defined or measured. This paper uses the framework suggested by Gibbs (1965, 1972, 1978) who proposes that we focus on normative properties whose presence or absence is a matter of degree. The set of normative properties analyzed in this paper relate to collective evaluations about alcohol use among Mennonites in Canada. Variation in degree of group agreement, evaluative intensity, saliency of the issue, permissible variation in situations and actors are measured. Regression procedures are used to test the relationship between these normative properties about alcohol use and self-reported alcohol consumption in five independently selected samples of Mennonites. Since the groups vary in their evaluation of alcohol use, the usefulness of the normative properties as predictors of behavior can be tested. While the percent of the variance explained is high and quite consistent across the groups, the relative importance of the normative properties within and between the groups varies substantially.

The annual prevalence of heroin use among a cross-section of black adolescents and young adults from Harlem fell from eight percent in 1970–71 to less than three and a half percent in 1975–76. The most important component of this change was a sharp decline in the rate of heroin initiation among younger birth cohorts. Controlling for differential opportunity based on age of cohorts, twenty-two percent of this sample who were born in 1952 initiated use of heroin by age 18, compared to three percent of those born in 1957.

The explanation that appears most plausible for these findings is that, for most individuals, the actions of initiating and continuing heroin use appear to be a product of rational choice. And the context within which that choice was made was appreciably altered in this generation unit of Harlem youth.

In 1972, a strike closed down Finnish liquor stores for five weeks, and the overall consumption of alcohol decreased by roughly a third. Results from observational studies and analyses of survey data and statistical records on the effects of the strike are presented. During the strike, arrests for drunkenness decreased to about one-half, cases of assault and battery were reduced by some 20 to 25 percent and cases of drunken driving by between 10 and 15 percent. Home production of alcoholic beverages and consumption of surrogate alcohol showed some increase.

The strike affected different population groups in different ways. The frequency of arrests of homeless alcoholics was reduced to a lesser degree than was that of socially less isolated drinkers. Older persons and lower strata reacted more passively than younger people and the middle class, who were more actively turning to alternative sources of alcohol.

Look-alike and sound-alike drugs can be misinterpreted by a nurse reading doctors' orders and by a pharmacist compounding physicians' prescriptions. Such misunderstandings can result in the administration of a drug not intended by the prescriber. Awareness of such look-alike and sound-alike drugs can reduce potential errors.

JDI regrets the following errors which were made in Michael P. Rosenthal's article. “Partial Prohibitlon of Non-Medical Drug Use: A Proposal” which appeared in our Fall 1979 number.

p. 437, paragraph 1, line 6. The words “simple possesslons” should read “simple possession”.

p. 442, 5th line from the bottom of the page. The words “danger that some drugs” shou1d read “danger, that some drugs”.

p. 451, paragraph 1, line 11. The word “policy” should read “police”.

p. 453, 8th line from the bottom of the page. The word “studies” should read “studied”.

p. 455, 1st full paragraph, 8th line. The word “pose” should read “poses”.

p. 456, 1st full paragraph, 2nd line. The words “about the heroin addiction” should read “about heroin addiction”.

p. 461, line 4. The words “agalnst use of distribution” should read “against use or distribution”.

p. 463, 1st full paragraph. 8th line. The words “obtaining drug” should read “obtaining the drug”.

p, 465, 3rd full paragraph, 9th line. The word “expensed” shou1d read “dispensed”.

p. 467, line 2. The word “prefereable” should read “preferable”.

p. 469, 2nd full paragraph. 17th line. The words “not Place sanctions” should read “not to place sanctions”.

p. 473, note 32, line 2. The words “production nor cultivation” should read “production or cultivation”.

pp. 474–475, note 43. The text of this note is a quotation from the cited issue of Newsweek magazine and should be in quotes.

p. 475, note 51, 5th line from the bottom of the page. The parenthesis should close after the word “barbiturates”.

p. 480, note 91. “1977 N.W. Laws” should read “1977 N.Y. Laws”.

p. 483, note 141. This note should be renumbered as note 140.

p. 483, note 140. This note should be renumbered as note 141 and should in its entirety read an follows: “141. Degree and type of enforcement may be important in determining levels of heroin use. In fact, vigorous enforcement of lenient laws may have more of an impact on use than lax enforcement of strict laws. See M. 11. Moore. Buy and Bust: The Effectiue Regulation of an Illicit Market in Heroin passim and especially xx-xxii (1977) (hereinafter “Moore”).”

p. 483, note 147, line 1. The words “i.e. one or 2 bags or capsules, rationales” should read “I.e., one or two bags or capsules. Rationales”.