Social Control and Drugs
There is a well known oft quoted phrase used by Bruce G. Charlton from Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne about diazepam as a favourite drug among British. They use it as, “Diazepam with your dinner, Sir”. Drugs are also becoming a sign of life style, self-medication for tension and even a matter of social courtesy during dinner parties, picnics, and birthday celebrations etcetera.
Therefore, there is a fertile social ethos making space for drugs in modern British culture. Lifestyle is often the trend setter. Hence, Tony Blair’s random testing will bring results of widespread drug addiction among larger populace of the British isle. Whether there are addicts or not – it will be difficult to find. Yes, massive use of drugs may come to new light because general surveys could never really bring out the vast pastures of drug abuse in Britain fully. Varied use of drugs has certainly come to light. Cocaine, heroine, crack, diazepam, opium, cannabis, and ecstasy are popular drugs in use in United Kingdom.
The overall situation is more alarming than what it appears to be. Instruments of social control such as family, peer groups, schools, social trusts and other such institutions, non-governmental organisations, voluntary rehabilitation centres, governmental and other improvement centres etcetera are obviously run by modern victims/consumers of drugs – one way or the other – specially in view of vast and inherent ‘networking’ of present-day depression, stresses and tensions of a fast moving lonely lifestyle. Wither do we find a tree without fruition of drugs on its branches today!
How this social control of drugs will be possible when everyone appears to be enjoying drugs in some way. Despite this, optimism must always continue to encourage in solving modern dilemmas. There are of course six social control strategies such as target removal, target devaluation, target insulation, offender incapacitation, offender exclusion and identification of offences and offenders. These techniques often work wonders when applied properly. However, if these techniques are also provided required moral and inner force, then there cannot be any doubt about their success.
Deviance and social control are mutually interdependent terms. Social control is immediately required when socially threatening acts of deviance start occurring on a wider social plain – such acts as drug usage and its disturbing social impact. United Kingdom is suffering from this drugs use and abuse for several years now. How this drug usage is to be controlled more effectively? Is this social control really necessary in one of the oldest and most successful democracies of the world? Should social use of drugs be regarded as dangerous deviant behaviour?
Deviance
One way of deciding diverse social controls in society is the perspective of existing established social norms. Any deviation from them is deviance. The nature of social norms in a given social milieu determines the acceptable and unacceptable levels of social behaviour. The intolerable and unacceptable part of social conduct is branded as “deviance” or “deviant behaviour”. The utterly improper instances of social behaviour have to be subjected to social control. The nature of social norms is the primary yardstick to unfold generally acceptable standards of social behaviour. Transgression of these norms enters into the realm of deviance. Socially unacceptable behaviour requires the use of social control for social harmony and societal health and cohesion.
The nature of socially acceptable norms differs from society to society and place to place – at times – from family to family also. Reasonable or permissible consumption of alcohol is necessary almost daily in colder regions of the world like United Kingdom and others. In quite a few other warmer regions and their highly traditional societies, on the other hand, alcohol consumption is a social taboo not only in routine life but also during religious and other festivals. This is specially true in traditional Indian Hindu families and conventional Chinese Buddhist households. However, modern Hindu and Buddhist homes have now come to terms with alcohol in their routine life styles.
Need for Social Control
Standards of deviant behaviour differ according to time, place, societal practices and familial understanding at a given moment ant social environment. Indeed, certain questions emerge here. Is deviance, as it were, in the eyes of the beholder? How to judge who is a deviant? Who are to be considered as deviants? Who will decide who is a deviant? Do deviants threaten normal social existence and behaviour? Is deviance socially bad? Is it necessary to have social control of deviant behaviour?
Every human person is an original being with personality specific distinctive traits. As such, for every individual every other person may appear to be a deviant person. However, the concept of deviance is mainly a social concept involving social norms and behaviour. An individual’s distinctiveness and idiosyncrasies are not in its purview as long as they do not affect social perspectives, norms and order. Despite this, it is true to a great extent that ‘deviance lies in the eyes of the beholder’. Beholders here are society, social norms and law of the land – law as derivative of established social norms and behaviour.
Deviance is an area where law does not prove to be meaningfully effective. Deviance is often a socially dangerous practice adhered to as a matter of habit formation and not so much as a crime or criminal behaviour. No doubt, long term effects of threatening deviant behaviour like addiction to drugs on an increasing scale can be more hazardous than the murder of an individual. Yet, deviance is not so easy for law of the land to deal with without social control of behaviour.
Deviance Defined
Non-conformity of behaviour to established social norms is deviance. Deviance is ideational and behavioural both. This scale of non-conformity can vary from location to location and even otherwise also. In United Kingdom it may be different in comparison to Spain and Italy etcetera.
Deviance is the result of numerous interactive and mutually overlapping variables such as home, environment, peer groups, adjustment, interpersonal relations, socio-economic status, religious practices, school, family, institutional climate etcetera. Even most of the creative writers, painters, novelists, poets, dramatists and other such persons are generally deviants in varied aspects of their behaviour. Their deviance, however, is self-affecting and not dangerous to society. When any type of deviant behaviour becomes socially harmful then it is regarded as really deviant and threatening to community in general. It is at this stage of deviance that social control of harmful deviant behaviour is taken recourse to. This has to be observed, diagnosed, treated for the present and also prevented for future.
One of the most pernicious types of deviance that is playing the role of termites hollowing young and dynamic citizens’ life and careers is the increasing use of drugs in the name of preventing diversified mental stress among youth of United Kingdom in particular and the world in general.
Drug Usage in United Kingdom
Drug use and its addiction amongst children and adolescents is common factor and instance of dangerous deviance the world over. It is difficult to come across a society and community where such drug usage is regarded as an act of normal and socially acceptable behaviour. Indeed, this is one of the worst aspects of social deviance spreading amidst children in the age group of six to sixteen.
United Kingdom Threat Assessment (UKTA) produced by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) describes and assesses threats to the UK from serious organised crimes including drug usage and addiction and its related aspects. Newly created Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), from 01 April 2006, has also joined UKTA and NCIS in their endeavour to streamline this challenge of increasing drug use in society. According to yet another 2005 report on drug use in UK:
“
[In a] …survey of 10,000 children aged 11 to 15 carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and the National Foundation for Educational Research, 8 per cent of 11 year olds and 38 per cent of 15 year olds in England had used drugs in the last year. Although cannabis was the drug most widely used by pupils, 4 per cent of the sample reported having used a Class ‘A’ drug in the last year... In addition to concern at the overall level of illegal drug use on the part of young people within the UK there has also been concern at the young age at which some people are starting to use illegal drugs. [In another survey] …2,318 children aged 10 to 12 in Glasgow and Newcastle… a third of the children had been exposed to illegal drugs, almost one in ten had been offered illegal drugs and one in 20 had used illegal drugs in the past; 2 per cent had done so within the last month. Whilst such surveys report important data on the overall level of illegal drug use on the part of young people, much of the drug use involved relates to cannabis and it is likely that only a minority of these children will go on to develop a pattern of longer-term drug misuse. Over the last few years it has also been evident that the level of illegal drug use on the part of young people in the UK is higher than that amongst many other European centres”
(McKeganey et al., 2004).
In such cases of drug use and widespread involvement of children in this activity, only legal remedies, laws and rules and strict regulations cannot really serve the social cause of rehabilitation of affected children. Laws of the land have their own place and role. They can be more effective in prevention of drug use instead of rehabilitation of drug addict children. In this matter, concerned families, non-governmental organisations, social service and social welfare institutions can be more useful.
Random Testing and Drug Usage
In February 2004 Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an interview to News of the World said:
“We cannot force them to do it but if heads believe they have a problem in their schools then they should be able to use random drug testing.”
“The announcement of prime ministerial support for drug testing pupils on a random basis caused great surprise amongst experts in the field and some sections of the media, not least because there had been little prior indication that the government was considering this policy. Within the United States, by contrast, drug-testing programmes have been developed across the country and there has been a flourishing political, legal and public debate over the pros and cons of testing schoolchildren”
(Caulkins et al., 2002).
Random testing of pupils is a very sensitive matter. It will create a constant sense of psychological mental burden upon British children and adolescents of being watched all the while. Before applying this policy, vast surveys upon its short term and long term repercussions should have been conducted. This policy of random testing has a positive feature within an inherent dimension of creating lingering feeling of fear in the minds of upcoming children. Such tests are to be conducted at random upon drug addicts and normal children alike in effect. Only about 4 to 40 per cent of schooling children are currently under the influence of drug use. Remaining 60 to 84 per cent children will also have to face this ordeal of random testing. What will be its impact upon them? Only future can tell.
One positive impact of this random testing will certainly be two-fold. Most of the drug taking children will be more akin to be detected about their drug usage practice much sooner than otherwise. In this sense, the scope of rehabilitation of more and more children may take place on a larger scale.
Russell Newcombe points an interesting feature of drug usage in United Kingdom. For him, only a very small minority of drug users constitute
“problem drug users”
(Phil Rees, 2005). Earlier, before random testing, British Government was doing other experiments. Random testing is the most recent one. Phil Rees from British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quotes Newcombe:
“I don’t think there’s any other area of social policy where we would apply the same policy year in year out for decades only to show that the problem got worse every year, and yet still continue with it saying well if we keep doing it, it might work one day”
(Phil Rees, 2005).
Indeed, Tony Blair must still be given a clean chit for his entire purpose appears to be benevolent and socially uplifting in the interest of larger society and happier and healthier British citizens. When this aim will be realised? It is difficult to answer this obvious question.
The annual British Crime Survey of recent years has shown increasing use of different drugs by British citizens ranging from 16 to 59 age groups. It is not easy to clearly bring out the addicts and recreational users through such anonymous surveys. Varied use of drugs has certainly come to light. Cocaine, heroine, crack, diazepam, opium, cannabis, and ecstasy are popular drugs in use in United Kingdom.
Conclusion
Technology and techniques are very much there. The moral force to properly utilise these techniques is missing to a great extent. Social control from a point of weakness under the garb of legalities is not as much desirable as from a point of moral strength and inner determination.
Why certain types of intoxicating drugs are made easily available in open markets? Is it necessary to equate this freedom with fundamentals of democracy? Long term freedom for usage of drugs is actually giving the right to commit suicide as a coward under the influence of drug induced sensationlessness. Is it really worth giving a try?
References
Caulkins, J., Pacula, R., Paddock, S. and Chiesa, J. (2002) School-Based Drug Prevention: What Kind of Drug Use Does It Prevent? [url=http://
www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1459/
McKeganey, N., McIntosh, J., MaCdonald, F., Gilvarry, E., McArdle, P. and McCarthy, S. (2004) ‘Preteen children and illegal drugs’, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 315–27.
Rees, Phil. (2005) “The Failure of UK Drug Policy”, [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/4138371.stm Russell Newcombe is a Senior Lecturer with a Ph.D. working at Drug Use and Addiction Programme of John Moores University in Liverpool.
