"The fascinating studies in this book bring much needed sociological imagination to bear upon the processes that shape drug and alcohol problems. Professionals and students alike will find first-rate scholarship and accessible writing that shake up drug war stereotypes."

--Craig Reinarman, UC-Santa Cruz

Publisher Web Site, October, 2003

Drugs, Alcohol, and Social Problems, a collection edited James D. Orcutt and David R. Rudy, includes 14 clearly written articles that exemplify the best of sociological scholarship on drug and alcohol problems. The readings strike a balance between constructionist, epidemiological, and ethnographic approaches to the study of drinking, drug use, and related problems such as domestic violence, crime, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. A general introduction and five section introductions written especially for this volume highlight basic theoretical questions and analytical themes that run through the articles. In contrast to many books on problems of substance use, Drugs, Alcohol, and Social Problems devotes equal attention to drug- and alcohol-related issues. The volume is organized around important theoretical and research approaches to the sociology of social problems, making it suitable for adoption as a supplement in undergraduate courses on social problems as well as for more specialized undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of drug and alcohol studies.

General Introduction

Section I. The Social Construction of Drug and Alcohol Problems

Introduction

1. Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State

Joseph R. Gusfield

2. Deviant Drinking as Disease: Alcoholism as a Social Accomplishment

Joseph W. Schneider

Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts: Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media

James D. Orcutt and J. Blake Turner

Section II. Political and Ideological Contexts

Introduction

Comparative Ideologies and Alcoholism: The Protestant and Proletarian Ethics

Timothy P. Rouse and Prabha N. Unnithan

Setting the Public Agenda: 'Street Crime' and Drug Use in American Politics

Katherine Beckett

Truth and DARE: Tracking Drug Education to Graduation and as Symbolic Politics

Earl Wysong, Richard Aniskiewicz, and David Wright

Section III. Social Patterns: Epidemiological Research

Introduction

Explaining Racial/Ethnic Differences in Adolescent Drug Use: The Impact of Background and Lifestyle

John M. Wallace, Jr., and Jerald G. Backman

Drinking by Black and White Women: Results from a National Survey

Denise Herd

Race, Class, and Gender Differences in Substance Abuse: Evidence of Middle-Class/Underclass Polarization among Black Males

Kellie E.M. Barr, Michael P. Farrell, Grace M. Barnes, and John W. Welte

Section IV. Social Worlds: Qualitative Research

Introduction

You Can't Help but Get Stoned: Notes on the Social Organization of Marijuana Smoking

Don H. Zimmerman and D. Lawrence Weider

11. Shifts and Oscillations in Deviant Careers: The Case of Upper-Level Drug Dealers and Smugglers

Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler

Section V. Links to Other Social Problems

Introduction

The 'Drunken Bum' Theory of Wife Beating

Glenda Kaufman Kantor and Murray A. Straus

Drugs-Crime Connections: Elaborations from the Life Histories of Hard-Core Heroin Addicts

Charles E. Faupel and Carl B. Klockars

15. Social Misery and the Sanctions of Substance Abuse: Confronting HIV Risk Among Homeless Heroin Addicts in San Francisco

Philippe Bourgois, Mark Lettiere, and James Quesada