Approaching the social control of drugs, I: Construction of the problem

The paper aims at outlining the social process whereby drug use has been defined as a major problem of contemporary society. The beginning of profane use of drugs is located in modern industrial society, while their global spread and the establishment of the prohibition system took place in the second half of 20th century. The generalized notion of drugs has dissolved into three different groups: some substances (coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco) are socially accepted; others, like barbiturates or tranquilizers are legitimated by medicine, while the third group - opium, cocaine, cannabis and psychodelics - provoke social censure, exclusion and legal prohibition. The second part of the paper analyzes the process of constructing the "problem" of drug use in public discourse, mainly in the mass media. The starting assumption is that sociological analysis of any phenomenon, especially if it is stigmatized, must necessarily include a deconstruction of the discourse in which the phenomenon is defined, which involves historical and cultural contextualization, uncovering of power relations and drives to maintain the existing social order, as well as strategies of particular social groups whose interests are served by such definitions. The tactics of "moral panic" is singled out as particularly apt in these processes