Moral Entrepreneurs: Campaigning and the Social Construction of Drug Scares- REINARMEN
Moral Entrepreneurs and the Social Construction of Drug Scares
Craig Reinarman's work examines the social and legal attitudes toward illicit drugs in America, focusing on the history of drug scares, the individuals and groups that engineer them, and the social conditions that foster their development. Reinarman identifies seven factors common to drug scares and explains how these scares scapegoat drugs to account for social problems and oppress certain groups by defining their actions as deviant.
Drug Scares as Recurring Phenomena
Drug scares, marked by public concern over drugs, are recurring cultural and political phenomena. Understanding acute societal concern about drug use and problems is crucial, especially in the U.S., which has a history of anti-drug crusades and repressive laws. Reform efforts often fail due to deep-seated sentiments against consciousness-altering substances ingrained in American culture.
Origins and Nature of Anti-Drug Claims
Anti-drug claims appeal because they attribute many of the world's problems to a single cause. Understanding how "drug problems" are constructed is essential for achieving enlightened and effective drug policies. Reinarman summarizes major periods of anti-drug sentiment in the U.S. and identifies the basic elements of drug scares and drug laws. He interprets these scares and laws based on broad features of American culture that make self-control problematic.
Defining Drug Scares
Drug scares have been a recurring feature of U.S. society for 200 years, relatively autonomous from actual drug-related problems. They are a form of moral panic, like Red Scares, where a chemical bogeyman is portrayed as the core cause of public problems.
Temperance Movement
The first major drug scare was over alcohol, led by the Temperance movement from the late 18th to the early 20th century, culminating in Prohibition in 1919. This movement was driven by native-born, middle-class, non-urban Protestants threatened by working-class, Catholic immigrants. The battle against booze was a cultural conflict over whose morality would dominate America. Claims of Temperance leaders appealed to middle-class people seeking explanations for social and economic problems of industrializing America. Corporate supporters of Prohibition believed that working-class drinking habits interfered with factory rhythms, productivity, and profits. The Anti-Saloon League and other groups saw saloons as breeding grounds for immorality, unionism, and leftist organizing.
Alcohol as Scapegoat
Alcohol was scapegoated for poverty, crime, moral degeneracy, broken families, illegitimacy, unemployment, and business failure, despite these problems stemming from broader economic and political forces.
San Francisco's Anti-Opium Den Ordinance
America's first drug law was San Francisco's anti-opium den ordinance of 1875. This campaign focused on opium smoking by Chinese immigrants, who came to California as "coolie" labor. When the railroad was completed and gold dried up, Chinese immigrants became targets in a tight labor market. The white Workingman's Party incited racial hatred against low-wage "coolies." The anti-opium law was one of many laws to harass and control Chinese workers.
The law was passed against a specific form of drug use by a disreputable group seen as threatening during economic hardship, reflecting long-standing concerns about vices threatening public health, morals, and order. Concerns were raised about white people coming into intimate contact with Chinese people in opium dens, with law enforcement officials claiming Chinese men were seducing white women into sexual slavery.
Early 20th Century Opiate and Cocaine Scare
A nationwide scare focusing on opiates and cocaine began in the early 20th century. These drugs were criminalized when the addict population shifted from white, middle-class women to young, working-class males, particularly African-Americans. This led to the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, the first federal anti-drug law.
State Department diplomats, the medical and pharmaceutical professions, reformers, and the press supported the Act for various reasons. The press linked drug use with prostitutes, criminals, transient workers, and African-Americans. Southern Congressmen were told that cocaine induced African-American men to rape white women, gaining their support for the law.
Marijuana Criminalization During the Great Depression
During the Great Depression, Harry Anslinger of the Federal Narcotics Bureau pushed for a federal law against marijuana, claiming it was a "killer weed" that induced violence, especially among Mexican-Americans. Despite a lack of evidence, his crusade resulted in its criminalization in 1937, boosting his Bureau's fiscal fortunes. His claims played on racial fears and Victorian values against drug use for pleasure.
1960s Drug Scare
In the 1960s, political and moral leaders reconceptualized marijuana as the "drop out drug" leading youth to rebellion. Scientists published uncontrolled studies suggesting LSD caused genetic damage. These studies were later discredited, but not before they were used to promote a scare by the press, politicians, and medical professionals. Dominant groups felt the country was at war, not just with Vietnam, and perceived middle-class youth rejecting conventional values as a threat. This scare led to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Control Act of 1970, which criminalized more forms of drug use and imposed harsher penalties.
Crack Scare of the 1980s
The crack scare began in 1986 when freebase cocaine was renamed crack and sold in inexpensive units on ghetto street corners. Politicians and the media linked this new form of cocaine use to the inner-city, minority poor, leading to more prison cells rather than treatment slots. Politicians passed more repressive laws, providing billions more for law enforcement, longer sentences, and more drug offenses punishable by death. The U.S. now has more people in prison than any industrialized nation, with about half incarcerated for drug offenses, the majority of whom are racial minorities.
Each drug scare led to more repressive laws, but there is no evidence these laws reduced drug use or problems. Instead, they expanded social control, particularly over subordinate groups perceived as dangerous.
Seven Ingredients of Drug Scares
A Kernel of Truth: The ingestion of consciousness-altering chemicals exists in virtually all cultures, providing a basis for claims that it is a problem.
Media Magnification: The mass media exaggerates drug problems by turning worst cases into typical cases and episodic events into epidemics.
Politico-Moral Entrepreneurs: Political elites and moral entrepreneurs define drug use as a threat, often for their own (financial) interests. Drugs serve as a functional demon, deflecting attention from systemic sources of public problems. Taking a "tough on drugs" stance is politically advantageous.
Professional Interest Groups: Various professional groups, such as industrialists, churches, medical associations, law enforcement agencies, and the treatment industry, compete for the "ownership" of drug problems, defining the problem and prescribing solutions to garner resources.
Historical Context of Conflict: Underlying conflicts (economic, political, cultural, class, racial) make drugs into functional villains. Cultural anxiety, such as during periods of war, economic depression, or social change, provides fertile ground for drug scares.
Linking a Form of Drug Use to a “Dangerous Class”: Drug scares are about the use of drugs by particular groups of people already perceived as a threat. Moral entrepreneurs construct a “drug problem” by linking a substance to a group of users seen as disreputable or dangerous.
Scapegoating a Drug for a Wide Array of Public Problems: Blaming a drug for preexisting social ills gives explanatory power to claims about the horrors of drugs. Drugs become scapegoats, providing elites with a fig leaf to cover social problems and restricting the public's understanding of complex issues.
Culturally Specific Theory of Drug Scares
Drug scares are more common and virulent in the U.S. compared to other societies. The recurring character of pharmaco-phobia suggests something about American culture makes citizens vulnerable to anti-drug crusades.
Claims about the evils of drugs are viable in American culture because they provide a vocabulary of attribution. "DRUGS" become a scapegoat for bizarre behaviors or conditions that are difficult to explain. Individualistic explanations for problems are more common than social explanations in the U.S.
American society developed from a temperance culture forged in ascetic Protestantism and industrial capitalism, both of which demand self-control. In a culture where self-control is important, drug-induced altered states of consciousness are feared as a "loss of control."
Advanced capitalism has built a mass consumption culture that exacerbates the problem of self-control. The economy depends on the constant cultivation of new