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Sociological View On Deviance And Drug Use

Introduction
What can a sociologist tell us about deviance, and drug use that we do not already know? If there is anything distinctive about the sociologist view, it is their emphasis on social context. One of the central ideas of all human experience is meaning. Meaning is something imposed and socially made-up, and has two features: it is both external and internal. Meaning is assigned externally to objects and behavior by social cooperation. But it is also assigned by the individual (internal): it is arrived at as a result of a private act of choosing on the individual’s part. The same behavior, the same phenomenon, the same material reality, can mean completely different things to different people, or to the same person in different contexts. Meaning is an acknowledgment. It is superimposed on a phenomenon, a reality. It does not happen naturally. Anything may have multiple meanings, depending on one’s point of view. Human action is surrounded with meaning, and just about everything we do is evaluated, thought about, mulled over, judged and interpreted.
How do social definitions, interpretations, and meaning impose on deviance, drugs, drug effects, and drug related behavior? Are the same drug realities defined and interpreted in vastly different ways? How do contextual features change the relevant characteristics of drug use?
To understand drug use as a deviant behavior, we must first understand what deviance is, or how it becomes labeled as deviant.
Human deviance is just as characteristic of society as is conformity. Every human group, no matter how consistent stable and well integrated, must somehow respond to such problems as drug use, mental illness, violence, theft, and sexual misconduct, as well as to other similarly difficult behaviors. Problems of deviance inevitably are defined as being a real or perceived threat to the basic core values of the society. For whatever reasons, some persons act, at times at least, in...