Drugs and Society Lecture Notes

Week 1 Alcohol is the most popular of all psychoactive substances. Marijuana is not associated with a whole lot of criminal activity Continuance rates One-time users/current drug users Not everyone who tries a drug continues to use it, big discrepancy. This rate tells you not to concern yourself with the number of people who have ever tried a drug, but it tells you to be concerned about how many people continue to use it. Alcohol has the highest continuance rate for legal drugs, marijuana highest for illegal. Stigma associated with certain drugs is mostly illegal. The more deviant the drug, the more users discontinue its use. Consumption levels Total volume of a given drug that is used during a given time period. Ex. a drug that a lot of people use, but used sporadically, for example adderall or advil. They use it for one purpose but don't use it anymore. It would have a high prevalence rate but low consumption rate. Legalization influences consumption levels. tobacco=higher consumption level bc more of it is used alcohol=higher prevalence bc more ppl use it Life cycle rates Varying likelihoods of using drugs at different ages in the life span The likelihood of using drugs is highest in young adults 18-25. Low in adults years 36 to 34. Media plays a huge role. Media reports drug use as very high in the age group not used to this high rate. Legal instrumental use Drugs you buy from a legal channel and you use them for a purpose Ex. prescription drug This is the way most people use drugs. Ex. Advil, aspirin. If a drug is psychoactive,it remains permanently confined to the context of approved medical usage ex. Oxycontin doctors didn't know it was psychoactive and it didn't take long until the drug was used recreationally this is what caused the opioid epidemic. You could walk into a store and buy morphine, you could have heroin shipped to your home ppl started abusing them. Legal Recreational Use Ex. Coffee Alcohol, tobacco, caffeine can be used legally to achieve and altered state Legal instrumental use Take drugs without a prescription for use which society approves. Ex. taking your friends' adderall to study for a test. Ex. Consuming marijuana illegally to help bipolar. Illegal recreational use As of 2008- 177m ppl that have used drugs Natural Era When our ancestors ingested plants for psychoactive purposes. They would ferment flowers and fuit and grasses and weeds. Smoking marijuana was popular in the natural era. Opium derived from poppy plant Transformative era Early 19th century, 1803 extract morphine from opium, 1874 heroin extract from opium Transformed into a drug that is more easy to abuse essentially. Morphine relieves pain. Codeine was also extracted. Synthetic era 20th century Create drugs entirely out of chemicals. Barbital, 1920 first amphetamine. Before this you were very limited to what you could find in nature. Back in the 1800s if a person had allergies they would take cocaine. This era helped us learn that we can synthesize a lot of drugs in labs. (don't have to take morphine for a headache) 21ist century Availability of cocaine has decreased by nearly half. Coke and heroin is most concentrated in the inner cities Prescription drug use Reasons for government control: to ensure that unauthorized users don't harm others, make sure people dont take it if they don't need it ex. Blood pressure medicine Schedule 1 class Week 2 There were a lot of patent medicines that were being marketed. People were taking them and didn't really know what was in them. Coca cola Most soft drinks contained cocaine. Came from john pemberton in atlanta who was a patent med vendor. Marketed as something to help with concentration and alleviate headaches and help you sleep. It was being sold with cocaine for a long time and in 1906 ppl got more cautious and once they found out they had cocaine coca cola was pressured by the government to take cocaine out and they did. Numbers of addicts and users Reformers turn it into a race issue. Ex. laws aimed at certain races as a way to exact racial vengeance Prohibition 1784 dr ben rush published the first book that linked alcohol use to mental health problems. After the book came out hundreds of anti liquor corporations spawned. Workers that drank on the job were fired and taverns were shut down. Urban saloons were targets of prohibitionists. The anti saloon league 1893's major purpose was national prohibition. 1920 18th amendment (volstead act) passed by congress- took 146 years essentially. Early laws were aimed at recreational use. Chinese immigrants were coming over to build railroads and gold mines. After they were built we didn't really need them. Ppl thought they were going to take their jobs/threat. Idea was maybe if we make what they're doing illegal and they get caught we can get rid of them. The first federal drug law 1906 Pure food and drug act First time people wanted to know what they were eating and drinking. It required that the ingredients were listed. It didn't outlaw anything though. Media exposure brough out keener public awareness. Harrison act 1914 It required a prescription written by a licensed physician and every sale was taxed. This is why today doctors have to prescribe and you can't get some drugs over the counter. It didnt crimiliziae addiction or possession. Outlawed doctors writing prescriptions for ppl using it the wrong way (need a legit medical reason). Before this act doctors were letting ppl take these meds to stay addicted Marijuana tax act 1937 Early use of marijuana was medical (chinese emperor 2000 bc). We didn't use it recreationally until recently. George Washington grew cannabis for hemp. During the 20s and 30s recreational use increased. A lot of ppl using marijuana were associated with doing bad things because they were seen as second class citizens. Banned possession and sale of marijuana. Put emphasis on the people who were selling it. People were now forced to have a stamp to legally sell it- they never created the stamp. Controlled substances act Established penalties for selling and possessing a drug. The commission didn't see any medical utility for it so they made it schedule 1 so there's a lot of red tape to get it taken out. Nixon administration Focused on user rehabilitation. After he was reelected he was forced to go along with stakeholders who demanded higher penalties for drug offenses. Methadone programs ended. Declared war on drugs first Ford administration Cared less about rehab and treatment funding revoked. Built more jails. This is setting the stage for what we see under reagan Carter administration In favor of weed decriminalization. His aide Peter Bourne influenced Carter's opinion- he was forced to resign. Initiate 0 tolerance policy Reagan Focused a lot on the drug problem. He brought public attention to the drug problem. Massive incarceration. Nancy reagan formed the just say no club for school children 1988 anti drug act Death penalty for drug traffickers Feb. 11 Why do people use drugs? Selective interaction- we gravitate towards similar people Young ppl use rec drugs because they gravitate towards social circles that they are compatible with. You gravitate towards people who use that same drug as well. Social circles continue the use of drugs. Different factors are more influential at different stages of life- as you get older you pay more attention to your friends. Differential association theory People aren't born drug users. You learn these behaviors from ppl you associate with. Edwin Sutherland, father of criminology. You learn these behaviors in small groups, not big groups. Scale tips from if you're associating with people who break the law vs ppl who dont. Differential reinforcement theory Behavior is reinforced with positive reward. Avoiding pain. Negative reinforcement- heroin if you stop using it u have withdrawal pain. Marijuana doesn't work for negative reinforcement, only drugs like heroin and opium. Howard becker: becoming a marijuana user Looks at how people decide to use marijuana. You have to learn the pleasant effects (not always enjoyable the first time). Learning the technique, learning to perceive the effects of the drug. Control theory Why don't people use drugs? Elements of social bonding include your attachments. Anomie theory Cloward and ohlin They talk about crime in terms of goals and means but they disagree w merton bc they say that delinquents and criminals don't always have the same goals and means. Low working class criminals share their own deviant subcultural values from seeing that other ppl around them have blocked opportunities. John o'donnell Cultural deviance theory- criminalization of drugs pose a problem to users of drugs Integrated structural theory Societal reaction theory Instead of focusing on why ppl use drugs they focus on why society reacts the way it reacts. Week 3 Review Which drug is consumed the greatest number of times in the U.S. nicotine/ tobacco ADAM- study ppl who are in jail or major urban areas DAWN- studies overdoses and medical incidents with drugs NSDUH- Who can [articipate? Everybody over 12, they do phone calls and door to door (asking for attitude on drug use MTF- Administer questionnaires to kids in school (all grades). Has alcohol consumption increased after prohibition- yes First drug law outlawed-opium and it outlawed smoking it. Aimed at chinese people enacted in san francisco. Most commonly used legal drug: alcohol Which gross volume is consumed more: tobacco ed/ld ratio: the effective dose smallest amount to have the effect on you, varies if man or woman, height, weight. Lethal dose, how much u can take before you overdose/die. Varies on tolerance Controlled substances act: rehabilitation efforts, put drugs into the schedules 1-5 based on medical utility and propensity to abuse them Drug actions- when drugs interact with body chemistry. Very specific Marijuana tax act- goal- get rid of ppl from mexico. Established a tax on it and effectively banned it. Before this weed completely legal Anything that comes from an opioid is considered narcotics- this is what psychopharmacologists think. Anomie- disjoint between the means and the ends. Instrumental use- using a drug for a purpose ex. College student and adderall. Week 4 Many ppl who smoke cigs and drink alcohol mainly use illicit drugs as well. Some people are more risk tolerant than others. If we make drugs legal there will be a high drug overdose ratenot true bc some ppl just dont use drugs In the industrialized society legal drugs contribute more than 5 times to premature death than do illegal drugs. Why? Alcohol, tobacco legal Symptomatic drinking Get anxious or depressed and want to drink. Only drinking bc it relieves stress. At risk drinking: over 4 drinks on any day, over 14 a week Enablers Ppl whose behaviors cause another person to continue alcohol use Dependence- uncontrolled alcohol intake, withdrawal, life problems, tolerance, Physiological effects- tolerance, withdrawal (AWS-trouble sleeping, seizures), liver disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurological disease like wernicke korsakoff, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, delirium tremens (complete confusion), Alcoholic dementia (cognitive deficits loss of short term memory), Confabulation (making up past histories to cover the fact that long-term memory has been impaired. Alcohol as well as tobacco is teratogenic(causes birth defects) Rule of equivalency- mixed drink (scotch and coke etc) contains same amount Since 1964, there has been increased use of filtered, low tar and low nicotine cigarettes. Week5 .. Week 6 4/9 The spanish brought marijuana to America, but the first time it was grown was in jamestown. George Washington grew hemp. It was a major commercial crop. Some patent medications in the early 1900s contained weed. It was more often than not smoked. People used it to make tea and stuff- not to the extent that cocaine and heroin was being used. After the 1900s people were using drugs medicinally , after Harrison acted much more recreational use of marijuana in the 1920s. Had a lot to do with prohibition. Jazz musicians and people in showbusiness were using it. People from Mexico were using it. We had issues with Mexico at the time- Americans started to feel uncomfortable with Mexicans fleeing Mexico and coming into america. Used weed use to exploit these people. Reefer songs, tea pads- kind of like speakeasy but for marijuana. Jazz musicians played there. These establishments were not illegal. Weed was listed in the pharmacopeia in the 1930s, it was becoming more associated with these ppl that are deemed undesirable. Marinol- synthetic marijuana (no thc) Eastlnand commission linked marijuana use to shrinking of the brain, lower testosterone and impotence, chromosomal damage, lung damage, birth defects Quiz 5 The tobacco plant is indigenous to which of the following continents or regions: western hemisphere The tobacco plant is indigenous to which of the following continents or regions: positive—drinkers are more likely to use illicit drugs than nondrinkers In a psychopharmacological sense: all drinkers of alcohol are drug users Statistically speaking, the setting in which alcohol-impairment injury is most likely to take place is a: bar The alcohol studies, the rule of equivalency is the principle that: what counts in the effects of alcohol is determined by a given quantity of absolute alcohol consumed, other factors being equal, and not the quantity of the beverage consumed The relationship between a driver's BAC (blood-alcohol concentration) and getting into an accident that kills someone is: The relationship between the sale of alcohol in a given location and the likelihood that residents living in that location will be hospitalized for assault is: The relationship between alcohol consumption and being the victim of criminal, violent behavior is: The relationship between alcohol consumption and engaging in risky, deviant behavior is: POSITIVE Between 1963 and today, the per capita consumption of cigarettes in the U.S. population (age 18 and older): decreased Week 7 cancelled Week 9 Meth is manufactured illicitly, amphetamines are manufactured in the lab. Meth increases metabolism- reason why get so skinny Iodine and phosphorus break down teeth. Quiz 7 Sedative-hypnotic drugs include: barbiturates Which of the following drugs or drug categories is no longer prescribed at all? methaqualone Non-psychoactive prescription drug types include the: lipitor Which of the following prescription drugs or drug types is synergistic with alcohol? barbiturates The government agency that regulates prescription drugs is the: fda Which of the following prescription drugs are not addicting or habit-forming: anti psychotics Which of the following pharmaceutical drugs or drug types are frequently prescribed for thought disorders? Anti psychotics Some drugs work mainly on the mind (the so-called "mind" drugs) while others work mainly on the body ("body" drugs). Which of the following is mainly a "body" drug: lipitor lipid generator In the 1960s, the barbiturates were a widely-prescribed sedative-hypnotic; today, they are much less commonly prescribed. Why? They have harmful side effects Which of the following pharmaceutical drugs or drug types are frequently prescribed for mood disorders? Antidepressants Week 10 Quiz 8 1. Which of the following is the origin of the plant from whose leaves cocaine is extracted? Mexico Virginia ->The Mountains of South America The Middle East 1 points QUESTION 2 1. Amphetamines were used during WWII to: Help the soldiers lose weight Suppress the soldier’s appetites so the government could buy less food Produce gunpowder ->Help the soldiers fight longer with more agility