Illicit substance use would appear to be a fruitful arena in which to use sociology to provide us with the insights needed to understand a vast and changing panorama.

In very recent history, illicit drug use has engaged most of our youths, at least some of the time, and substantial segments of the adult population. The issue to be discussed here is whether sociology has contributed to our understanding of substance use, particularly the illicit substances proscribed by society.

It is necessary to specify precisely what is meant by a sociology of drug abuse. Although we will refer to the “licit” substances, our main task is to review what sociology has to contribute to our understanding of the use of a range of illicit substances.

These include a veritable pharmacopeia of substances: narcotics of various types; marijuana and hashish; cocaine; methaqualone; methadone; inhalants; PCP; and illicitly used prescription drugs, including a wide array of tranquilizers, barbiturates, amphetamines, and similar compounds.

Most of our discussion, however, will focus on heroin and marijuana because much more is currently known about the users of these substances. Not only is there a vast array of substances people use, there is also a very marked selectivity as to who uses which kinds of substances.

When LSD was being used by middle-class, college-age youths it was almost unknown in ghetto communities, where the drug users preferred heroin and marijuana. Patterns of drug use are generally not random; that is, the rates will vary sometimes by social class, other times by ethnicity, and almost always by age, since most illicit drug use is concentrated among adolescents and younger adults.

Any effort at explanation must note that the use of different substances varies across population groups. Further, usage patterns appear to go through various changes, partly because substances may become unavailable but also because trends abound in drug-using cultures as in other aspects of society. Except for marijuana and alcohol, the rates of sustained use of most other substances are rare events. This creates an additional problem, that of obtaining sufficient subjects for detailed investigations in most research strategies.

The variability just described, in choice of substances used and the different segments of society using them, raises a fundamental issue-- one that is not often confronted. That is, whether drug use is a phenomenon that can be directly explained or whether it is an epiphenomenon, an encrustation on a more basic set of behaviors.

One way this is often expressed is whether heroin use causes crime or vice versa or if marijuana use leads to the “hang loose” pattern associated with heavy users (Suchman 1968). There are indeed efforts to describe more elaborate patterns of behavior that cluster with the use of particular substances, that is, lifestyles or typologies, but the implications of this perspective are not often clearly drawn (Nurco and Lerner 1974).

The theoretical significance of this distinction is, of course, that what one is endeavoring to understand shifts radically. If one views heroin or LSD or marijuana as the focus for understanding, as an unalloyed dependent variable, then explanations take on one form.

This assumption explains the focus on the primary group, particularly the role of friendship networks and attendant processes. On the other hand, if heroin use attracts individuals who are already on the path to systematic deviance and social disengagement, explanations take another form.

The classic thesis of Lindesmith (1947) serves to illustrate this dilemma. He established as a condition for a theory of narcotic use that it must not be idiosyncratic, nor limited to particular cultures or groups.

But the use of opiates in very diverse settings involves not only individuals who are immersed in very different social systems, it even involves different forms of opiate use and generally engages individuals of different ages. The diversity that is implicit in this must lead, then, to a theory that is able to abstract social-structural commonalities in very different systems (perhaps insurmountable at this point in time) or one that reduces to an explanation that is primarily focused on properties of the substance.

In Lindesmith’s case, this becomes the phenomenon of withdrawal and the perception of users that they can only relieve their symptoms by engaging in the use of the drug. This latter explanation cannot be considered a sociological one, irrespective of any merits it may have. The issue noted earlier, whether heroin use causes criminal behavior, takes on very different meanings, depending on whether heroin is viewed as a discrete behavior that can be isolated from other aspects of a person’s life history or is instead simply an attribute of the patterned behavior of individuals (NIDA 1976).

Another question is whether it is possible to integrate all substance use into a single theory. Just as we noted that even a particular substance may be, from one point of view, an epiphenomenon, the wide array of substances that are used also presents problems for anyone who would attempt to include them in a single theoretical framework.

SOME SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

The sociological theories that are most often cited are derived from formulations that were designed to provide insight into delinquency and criminal behavior. We review them in some detail because they illuminate the sociological questions that may be raised. They also direct us to the questions that remain to be answered.

The formulation of Merton’s essay on “Social Structure and Anomie” (1957, pp. 131-160) is probably the most frequently cited theory. The key feature, and perhaps the primary reason for the theory’s attractiveness, is that it is an effort to specify how features of the social structure that are external to the individual actors produce observable patterns of behavior (Stinchcombe 1975, pp. 11-33).

As with any effort at sociological explanation, it does not endeavor to account for all varieties of idiosyncratic responses. The theoretical objective is to understand different rates of behavior that are observed in socially important entities such as sex, class, and ethnic groups.

In his well-known formulation, Merton posits two systems: culturally prescribed goals for achievement, and institutionally organized modes for achieving these goals. The feature of this formulation that concerns us is that despite the abundant citation of this theory (Cole 1975), it illustrates another of Merton’s observations made elsewhere, namely, that there is a disjunction between theory and empirical research (1957, pp. 131-160).

While there are efforts to use at least portions of the theory (as in Jessor 1979 and Jessor et al. 1968), the basic formulation is incompatible with most research strategies. One does not generally observe institutional norms but obtains individual perceptions of these norms, except where legal norms are invoked (Waldorf and Daily 1975).

Nor does one readily obtain information on institutional access; one infers them, in most instances, from respondents’ reports. While these may reflect larger cultural and structural facts, as Merton and Jessor suggest, it is not altogether clear that one can trace individual perceptions to larger systems except as they appear to be consistent with the assumptions of the theory.

For example, lower class adolescents may often see schools as hostile and irrelevant environments for them. One may interpret this as reflecting a reality that blocks a significant route for the achievement of culturally prescribed success goals. However, this is not an unambiguous interpretation.

It is equally plausible to view the same information as a response to much more limited spheres--such as cognitive ability or a response to family and peer groups--that socialize lower class youths in ways that are incongruent with the demands of educational or occupational systems. We do not argue for this latter interpretation, nor is it an “unsociological” one.

But it illustrates how the same information may be variously interpreted and embedded at different levels of abstraction. The linkages between theory and fact are simply ambiguous without other information, which is often not available.

The derivations from Merton’s theory, however, are also troublesome. Merton views drug use (and he appears to have heroin addicts in mind) as a sort of “retreatism,” in which individuals eschew culturally prescribed goals for achievement and are barred from or reject access to the goals that facilitate success.

The rejection of both goals and means encompasses not only drug addicts, but alcoholics, psychotics, outcasts, and vagabonds. The use of opiates, which are depressants, is consistent with the theme that addicts have little incentive to participate in the activities of the day-to-day world, both its cultural prescriptions and the institutionally approved routes for achievement.

Unfortunately, the facts that have accumulated on addicts, most of them subsequent to the formulation of the theory (1949), are not easily reconciled with the retreatist theme (Lukoff 1972; Lukoff and Brook 1974; Waldorf and Daily 1975). Life is almost frenetic for addicts. In order to survive they must keep out of the way of the police, raise the considerable funds they require, and keep abreast of where drugs might be obtained.

An extension of Merton’s formulation is the theory of Cloward and Ohlin (1960). with its focus on the structure of opportunities. They posit a more elaborate organization or criminal activity, in which youngsters who are recruited into crime achieve some of the culturally prescribed rewards associated with achievement.

But those who have failed in both the conventional route and the criminal one are double failures and prime candidates for drug use. The significance of this formulation is that it also locates heroin use among the structures that are external to the individual.

It appears to comport with the fact that minority youths, who are assumed, to have little access to mobility in the ranks of organized crime, have higher rates of drug use than do lower class white youths, who presumably have such access.

It is difficult to document the distribution of various forms of organized crime, or the recruitment of youngsters into these circles, except in illustrative or anecdotal ways (White 1943). The body of findings we will review later suggests that addicts are derived from the same matrix found in nonaddicted delinquents and that there is little to distinguish them from nonusers. And although addicts generally commit fewer violent crimes than nonaddicted criminals, they must be quite good at various forms of hustling and criminal activity in order to survive (Lukoff 1972; Preble and Miller 1977; NIDA 1976).

Despite their failure to explain drug use, the theories of Merton and of Cloward and Ohlin continue to be influential. The problems in specifying universal norms, or reasonably coherent structures that allocate individuals along different paths, are not unique to these formulations.

But they are the major efforts that have as their goals the identification of socially structured alternatives within which individuals presumably act out their lives and shape the options available to them (Stinchcombe 1975).

While contingent and subcultural patterns may contribute to different modes of expression, they still attempt to specify the broad outlines that direct persons’ lives. Much research on drug use would appear to examine derivative themes that are useful for organizing much of our knowledge.

We make no effort to review all of the research in this brief paper, only that portion that directs us to alternative structural sources for understanding drug use and deviance.

SOCIAL LOCATION

Most investigations, even those that are descriptive or primarily epidemiological, without any clear theoretical agenda, generally examine substance use rates by age, sex, social class, and race/ethnicity (Abelson et al. 1977; Johnston et al. 1979; O’Donnell et al. 1976).

Social class and race/ethnicity serve as surrogates for socially significant structural parameters. Where patterned differences emerge, they appear to reflect the different propensities these groups have for drug experimentation.

The theoretical issue, at first glance, is to comprehend how social location affects individuals located differentially within society. But illicit substance use is very volatile, even over relatively short historical epochs.

Currently, heroin use is concentrated in black and Hispanic communities, which appears to suggest that both lower socioeconomic status and belonging to disadvantaged minorities provide important clues to the attraction of heroin use.

However, at the turn of the century, opiate use, in various forms, was found primarily in white, middle-class females as a result of therapeutic use (Ball 1970; Ball and Bates 1970; Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs 1973).

In Britain, heroin users roughly match the class distribution of the larger society, and blacks are underrepresented (Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs 1973).

A closer examination of heroin use in ghetto communities in the United States reveals a more complex relationship of stratification to heroin use. Vaillant (1966b) contrasted Lexington addicts against their own communities and observed they were better educated than their comparable age-mates in the same tracts.

In a survey of an urban ghetto community, it was found that reported heroin use was associated with higher socioeconomic status, although this, as we will see, was a spurious relationship (Lukoff and Brook 1974; Lukoff 1977).

Thus, heroin users are not necessarily drawn from the most impoverished segments of the communities, where use is currently concentrated (Nurco 1979; Robins 1975a). Nor, as their education and intelligence suggest, are they necessarily those who should appear to be doomed to the margins of society (Ball and Bates 1970).

Only when contrasted against the larger society do socioeconomic status and lower education appear to be related to heroin use. This, however, appears to be the wrong way to examine the information. Instead, the relevant contrast would appear to be to examine heroin users against the backdrop of their own communities.

Then the picture shifts substantially. Because heroin use is a relatively rare event, most general population surveys report too few users for reliable estimates. Thus, caution is necessary in interpreting trends.

In a study of selective service registrants, O’Donnell and his colleagues (1976), when examining reported narcotic use by cohorts, showed that there was a decline among blacks in the later cohort, with an accompanying increase among whites.

In a survey of blacks in Harlem, Brunswick and Boyle (1979) examined rates by cohorts and observed a decline in initiation into heroin use among younger members of their panel.

Although it bears repeating that caution should be used, such trends do suggest how ephemeral heroin or other narcotic use might be in historic perspective, and that the clues to its use might be elsewhere than in the simple matter of gross contrasts by class or race observable in any one epoch.

The dynamic nature of drug use trends is even clearer for marijuana. When Becker (1963) investigated marijuana use two decades ago, it was largely confined to inner city blacks and jazz musicians. Currently, marijuana competes with alcohol as the most popular drug, especially among the young (Jessor and Jessor 1977; Johnston et al. 1978; Kandel 1978a).

Jessor and Jessor (1978), in reviewing marijuana trends, observe that there is a declining significance of such factors as “urbanicity,” race, and socioeconomic status.

Even sex differences are declining, although they appear to persist for heroin use. “At the level of the demographic environment then there has been a trend toward homogenization as far as variation in marijuana use is concerned” (Jessor and Jessor 1978, p. 341).

It is increasingly smoked in public settings; legal penalties in many places have been reduced; sanctions, where they exist, are often not invoked for possession of small quantities for personal use. Even when sanctions were punitive, marijuana use continued to increase in popularity, both for those who have ever tried it and among the proportion who use it with reasonable frequency.

Thus, normative systems are often only marginally effective, and they are subject to rapid change as the larger community begins to accommodate the persistent and pervasive use of the substance.

If most of the usual indicators of social location show declining significance, one persistent feature of marijuana use continues to be important: The vast majority of users are young.

And increasingly, the age of onset of marijuana use appears to be declining (Abelson et al. 1977; Johnston et al. 1979). Because of the relatively short time in which marijuana use has become popular, it is possible that current youthful and young adult users will continue to use it as they become older.

The same persistent relationship to age is present among heroin users. Almost all users start when young, at least in the United States experience (Brunswick and Boyle 1979; Lukoff 1972; Nurco 1979; Robins 1975a).

As cohorts of adults advance in age, the largest proportion who were addicted abandon heroin use. Winick (1964) estimates the typical duration of addiction to be just over eight years. Although older addicts exist, the heroin-using population is still weighted toward those who are relatively young.

Thus, the one unambiguous association with drug use, one that appears to persist, at least in Western cultures, is the relationship of drug use to youthfulness (Braucht et al. 1973).

Most of those who experiment with illicit drugs are young; those who become addicted, where there is information, decrease or cease drug use with advancing age.

Structural variables such as social class and race/ethnicity are much more ambiguously related to drug use, as our review of trends suggests. We exclude the misuse of medically prescribed drugs because they would appear to present very different configurations.