Socialist Perspectives of Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Socialist Perspectives on Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Introduction

The article that I have chosen for my research is “A Long American History With Drugs and Alcohol”. This article was published in The New York Times on the 25th of October, 1998, written by BESS LIEBENSON. In my paper I will review two sociological perspectives on the use of drugs and alcohol. Use of Drugs and alcohol has been a major concern throughout the history. It has been the bane for the last few centuries. Countries all over the world have been facing these issues, whether developed or underdeveloped.

Discussion

People all over the world depend on chemical substances. It gives them a lift and they feel they are able to concentrate better. These include the minor as well as the major substances. The United States of America as a nation has been on a war on drugs for at least the past thirty years. The struggle has referred as war with “no rules, no boundaries, no end” (PBS 2000). The government of the United States had been able to adopt strategies of aggressive law enforcement as well policies regarding the criminal justice. These were specially aimed at the reduction and the punishment of drug abusers (Fellner 2000). All the federal law offenders are supposed to serve a minimum of 87 percent of their sentence imposed by the court. This was done when the government of the United States bought severs changes in federal law. Most of the offers are sentenced accordingly based on their quantity and type of the drug involved in their initial arrest (Scalia 2001). In 1999 1532000 arrests were made which went up from 580900 in 1980 according to the Uniform Crime Report (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2003). Even though the increase in the number of drug arrest is considered as a good indication, some critics state that these arrests deny the needed treatment to some drug users. Tough sentences have not been able to decrease the use and availability of drugs. Some critics even argue that more focus on drug related crimes have sidetracked the law enforcement agencies from observing and focusing on more serious crimes.

After the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks, a new campaign was launched as well. This was when the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) issued an advertising highlighting that the sales of illicit drugs was terrorism itself. In one of the commercial, a drug user was named “Dan”. The advertisement showed that Dan was a drug user and he ended up supporting the terrorist (Teinowitz 2002). Even though these commercials gained a lot of public attention, they themselves were considered ineffective. This campaign was officially ended when the ONDCP started traditional campaigning where young people who were users were targeted in May 2003.

The drug issue in the United States of America has always been a serious one. In a national survey of health and drug use conducted in 2002 showed that ...