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Some Speculations on U.S. Drug Use
Author(s) -
Newitt Jane,
Singer Max,
Kahn Herman
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1971.tb00672.x
Subject(s) - pleasure , perspective (graphical) , argument (complex analysis) , medical prescription , drug , social control , control (management) , principal (computer security) , psychology , hedonism , social issues , social psychology , sociology , psychiatry , medicine , psychotherapist , social science , political science , law , pharmacology , economics , management , artificial intelligence , computer science , operating system
This paper distinguishes three principal purposes of drug use: for social control, for pleasure, and for medical and quasi‐medical reasons. The argument is made that a traditional view of the future as a leisure society may lead us to focus disproportionately on forms of drug use that have a pleasure or “mind expansion” motive. While acknowledging the likelihood of more drug use of these kinds, the authors offer a number of reasons why the greatest increase in drug use and the social problems it causes may, in a 20 or 30 year perspective, be in the area of medical prescription and self‐doctoring for anxieties and behavioral abnormalities. The overlap of this area with the use of drugs for social control is identified as posing formidable ethical problems. The paper concludes with a speculative description of all the roles of mind‐affecting drugs in the U.S. culture in the year 2000.