Pharmacologists refer to substances that have an impact on thinking, feeling, mood, and perception as psychoactive. Humans have always ingested psy- choactive substances. Higher organisms are neurologically hardwired to derive pleasure from the action of certain chemical substances. Psychoactive drugs, some powerfully so, activate pleasure centers of the brain, thereby potenti- ating continuing drug-taking behavior.
People take drugs to experience the effects that come with their mind-active properties.The neurological/pharmacological factor addresses how and why drug-taking behavior got started, but it does not address the most sociologically relevant issues: differences in drug-taking behavior between and among societies, social categories, and individuals in the population, as well as among drug types. In addition, the predisposition to use is a necessary but not sufficient explanation of use. Use also presupposes the availability or supply of, or opportu- nity to take, a given drug.Without a predisposition to use, drug use will not take place; without availability, it cannot take place. bstances are defined as “drugs” in a vari- ety of ways.
Indeed, most substances referred to as drugs do not influence the mind at all—that is, they are not psychoactive. Many have medicinal or therapeutic value: Antibiotics, antacids, and antitussives offer ready examples. Why people take such drugs can be answered by addressing medical motives. Other drugs influence perception, mood, cognitive processes, and emotion. Alcohol clearly qualifies in this respect, as do methamphetamine and PCP. Hence, the recreational motive—getting high—factors into the explanatory equation.
Still other substances, such as LSD, marijuana, and heroin, are illegal or illicit—their possession and sale are controlled by law. Hence, their legal status is implicated in why—or, more accurately, why not—some people use them. The medical, psychoactive, and illegal categories overlap: LSD is both psychoactive and a controlled substance, and morphine is both psycho- active and used as medicine, as well as illegal for nonmedical or recreational purposes. Medical sociologists are interested in the use of drugs in therapy. Criminologists study drugs as illegal substances.
Economists look at drugs as an exchange commodity, bought, sold, and distributed according to patterns both similar to and different from those of legal products. Anthropologists conduct research on the consumption of psychoactive plant products by tribal and agrarian peoples; here, cultural factors in drug use predominate. Policy ana- lysts examine the feasibility of specific drug policies. Pharmacologists consider the effects of drug substances on the physical organism; psychologists and psychopharmacol- ogists study their effects on the brain—that is, the mind.In this chapter, I will focus on the use of drugs that are both psychoactive and illicit.
In fact, drugs that strongly influence the mind tend to become criminalized. In the United States, aside from tobacco, which generates a “low-key” high, and alcohol, the only psychoactive substances that are not illegal for recreational purposes are those that are not widely used and have not yet become publicized as recreational drugs. The task of sociologists has always been and remains establishing a distinctive voice in the din of competing perspectives and disciplines investigating drug use.
