India recently voted in favour of the United Nations Drugs Commission dropping marijuana from the 'most dangerous' drug category and debate over the decriminalization of cannabis in india.
Relevance of syllabus:- Challenges of social transformation, conformity and deviance.
Drug culture refers to the rules, rites, and rituals associated with a particular drug. It also includes mannerisms, terminology, user etiquette, and group preferences, including style, age, and sexual orientation.
Functionalist perspective :- Drug use is functional for several parties in society. It provides drug users the various positive physiological effects that drugs have; it provides the sellers of legal or illegal drugs a source of income; and it provides jobs for the criminal justice system and the various other parties that deal with drug use. At the same time, both legal drugs and illegal drugs contribute to dysfunctions in society.
Marxist perspective :-Much drug use in poor urban areas results from the poverty, racial inequality, and other conditions affecting people in these locations. Racial and ethnic prejudice and inequality help determine why some drugs are illegal as well as the legal penalties for these drugs. The large multinational corporations that market and sell alcohol, tobacco, and other legal drugs play a powerful role in the popularity of these drugs and lobby political parties to minimize regulation of these drugs.
Sociology Elliott Currie says the use of the drugs by urban residents most of them poor and of colour reflects the impact of poverty and racial inequality.
Example :- nearly every person arrested in mumbai for cannabis consumption was a daily wage workers and a slum/street dwellers.
Symbolic interactionism :- Drug use arises from an individual’s interaction with people who engage in drug use. From this type of social interaction, an individual learns how to use a drug and also learns various attitudes that justify drug use and define the effects of a drug as effects that are enjoyable.
Social causes of drug culture
Family factors
1.Lesser social bonds with families and excessive family conflict.
2.Family history of alcoholism and Distortion of interpersonal family relationships.
3.Faulty socialization :- failure to transmit prosocial values and positive moral development.
4.Parental criminality and family social insularity.
5.Damily acculturation :- loss of parental control over adolescent by parents who are less acculturated then thier children.
Personal factors
1.Sexual harassment and subsequent depression.
2.Internalization of negative lebels leads to adopting deviant roles( they are called as " self-fulfilling prophecy "" by Charles Horton Cooley's.
2.anti-social personality disorder.
3.Relief and stress :- "temporarily escaping reality" justification of frequent intoxication.
4.Alienation, rebelliousness and peer culture
Social factors
1.Religious factor:- marijuana has been a part of India religious and social fabric used for medical purpose.
2.Structural violence :- the way of treating by justice system, health services, by thier families and communities.
3.Western culture :- ex: post modernism, pessimism and individualism indirectly influence on drug use and lead anti-sociao behaviour.
4.Social deprivation and social disinhibition
5.Legal lag :- legally available of tobacco- gateway of drug and alcohol-social lubricant= children take just to experiment.
1.Social exclusion :- stigma associated with drug use leads to social isolation and exclusion.
2.Family instability :- ex: divorce, domestic violence and marital rape.
3.Disrupt the social order and functioning of society.:- increasing criminal and violence activities, ex: rubbery, rape and vandalization of public properties.
4.Housing instability and high sexual behaviours.
5.Loss of social capital :- school delinquency, dropping out of schools, youths involvement in drug selling.
6.Rise of youth culture:- thinking to change the world under influence of drug.
1.It removes the negatives consequences ( stigma ) associated with criminal conviction for drug use.
2.Creat jobs for local producers and medical uses.
3.Reduce the burden on police and criminal justice system.
Arguments against of decriminalization of drugs
1.With decriminalization comes commercialization:- targeting the young assure them lifelong customers.
2.Persistent cognitive deficits:- depression and anxiety.
3.Rise of the risk society :- Ulrich Beck's - women, children and especially for youth.
