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WHDL - 00011713

Which Factors Cause People to Use Illicit Drugs?

Mallory Huston

Resource Types

Academic (Thesis, Dissertation, Etc.)

Resource Languages

English

Institutional Repository

Description / Abstract

Illicit drug use and its reasons are the areas that many sociologists have not researched thoroughly. The importance of impulsivity in explaining the reason for illegal drug use is dependent on societal constructs like gender, race, age, and income according to the available literature. Assessing illicit drug use is not complete until research examines the strain theory as well as labeling theory. According to the principle of strain theory, social pressure areas such as insufficient income or inadequate education and peer influence drive the members of society to engage in crime. The labeling theory maintains that, relative to how other people label certain individuals, so they behave that way. Treating someone or labeling an individual criminally deviant might foster deviance in them. Thus dissertation determines that the two theories apply in explaining drug use among some groups of people such as age, race, class or gender based on societal pressures and perception of them. This paper utilizes a quantitative approach supported by data gathered from Amazon Mechanical Turk to establish the problem of the study. The survey employs dichotomous questions as well as those based on the demographics of the population sample, N = 200, from a portion of the United States population. Descriptive and inferential statistics apply to examine the population characteristics and draw conclusions on the findings. A chi-square test applies in this study to assess the significant relationship between independent variables; age, race, income, and gender and the dependent variable, drug use. The results of this study show a significant correlation between drug use and race, gender, and income. However, age does not significantly imply drug use.

Arete: The PLNU Honors Journal