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Moral panics and the vocabularies of motives: A content analysis of the cyclical nature of the drug crisis, 1970-1985

The recently reported rise in drug abuse in the United States has led to a national perception of a drug crisis that requires immediate and far-reaching control efforts. Despite past experiences with drug control, the current drug crisis is occurring at a time of unprecedented adversarial relationships between the high demand for drugs and the national efforts to thwart the supply of narcotics. / From 1914 to the present, most observers argue that various anti-drug control strategies have been ineffective in controlling the so-called menace or crisis. These efforts are thought to have amplified the drug problem while stimulating symbolic crusades. Previous studies have attempted to single out the significant elements underlying the development of reforms to control illegal drugs. Underlying these studies is the importance of a single factor as being responsible for the adoption of a particular anti-drug policy. / Unlike previous studies, a major argument of this study is that the current anti-drug campaign is part of a periodic cycle of crisis. While rooted in the past, it serves to reinforce existing strategies of social control. This argument implies the notion of a process or stages of development and that several salient issues provide the particular social context from which control efforts have direct relevance. The appearance of newspaper articles regarding the drug problem is heightening the official and public sensitivities about the existence and nature of the drug problem. For this study, a sample of drug-related articles were content analyzed for the vocabularies that motivated the so-called drug crisis. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 1084. / Major Professor: Thomas Blomberg. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76347
ContributorsCintron, Myrna., Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText
Format189 p.
RightsOn campus use only.
RelationDissertation Abstracts International

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