With drug abuse becoming more common in our society, many scholars have been trying to explain reasons that make people, especially young people abuse drugs. There are several reasons that are believed to cause people to take illicit drinks that some even end up killing them.
Peer pressure is believed to be a major factor that makes people use drugs as a way to experiment. In colleges, many students engage in alcohol drinking (Hirschi, 1969). No one wants to …show more content…
These causes are mostly external to the person involved. Sociological, biological and psychological theories have different definitions of drug abuse. Sociological definitions focus more on the social meaning and patterns regarding their consumption. According to Woods et al. (1979), drug abuse is the regular use of drugs over a long period of time.
There are various sociological theories that explain drug abuse. For the purpose of discussion, the two theories that will be discussed on this paper are social control and self control theories. Both of these theories explain the relationship between drug abuse and criminal behavior. These theories rely on the concept of control and try to explain why some people conform to norms and laws of the society. These theories assume that crime and drug abuse go hand in hand. These theories propose that, when an individual gets drunk, he/she will do what comes naturally without thinking twice due to judgment impairment and thus making drug users prone to breaking the laws. However, these theories differ on how they emphasize the level of crime and drug abuse and how they …show more content…
The man was spotted by Deputy Kyle Farley as he was patrolling Ditty Road when he observed a car out turn into a driveway on Ditty road. Farley tried to talk to the driver who identified himself as Ronald Black and he was carrying a passenger called William Post. A strong smell of alcohol was coming from both Post and Black. On closer scrutiny, a bag of pills were found, identified as morphine sulphate which Black claimed to be medication prescription. Post admitted to be under influence and was charged with public intoxication while Black was served with warrants for the eighth DUI, violation of implied consent law and possession of a controlled drug (Amburgey, 2014).
Both of these cases support both the social control and self control theories of drug use. As the social control theory suggests, it is the lack of strong ties to social norms that make people engage in deviant behaviors. Due to lack of self control, most people find themselves doing acts that are against social norms, including drug and substance abuse and thus supporting the self control