Browsing by Subject "social pressure"

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Degenerates and Deviants: The Impact of Morality and Public Opinion on Drug Policy
(2021) Nagaraja, Sanjana; Young, Michael
Drug epidemics are influenced by several social risk factors, some of which have been studied. These include socioeconomic status, regional differences, as well as the racial background of affected individuals. Based on the varying social risk factors that influence a drug epidemic, we see different public responses and approaches to policy intervention. An area that has still not been characterized in depth is the influence of morality and regional values on the interventions that are used to curb drug epidemics. I will be looking at the public reactions to the crack epidemic and the current opioid crisis and assessing how different moral positions on these two drugs influenced the response. Additionally, I will be analyzing the HIV epidemic to further look at the intersection between morality and disease, and to create a further framework for how public opinion can influence policy. On the topic of morality, I will look at occurrences such as prohibition to assess the role of the government in regulating moral health decisions and the historical efficacy of this kind of policy. To tie these crises together, I will look at common sources of moral law, such as religion. Another factor that is related to this topic is regionality, and I will be looking at how population density plays an important role in assessing public opinion on a given drug epidemic, and how this influences interventions in the region. I will use these findings to suggest an appropriate degree of influence that public opinion and morality should have on our response to public health crises in light of modern drug crises such as the increase in fentanyl-laced drugs.