| Description |
This course aims to understand the personal and societal impacts of drug use and abuse in late-modern societies and the systems and policies governments have implemented in response. It will include a sociological assessment of the societal construction of drug use as a social problem, and the complex interplay between moral panics around drug use/abuse and the creation of laws and social policy in response to the public’s outrage. This course studies drug policies in the United States and drug policies from other nation-states, including the global south, to see what lessons we can learn from other societies and cultures. It considers how drug laws/policies have differentially affected some communities especially BIPOC ones. The connection between drug abuse and crime, and the criminal justice response to this relationship, is a salient theme of the course. Finally, this course reflects on the medicalization of addiction and how the shift away from criminalizing drug use/abuse affects public policy and law enforcement practices. |