1. The Allure of Drugs

2. “Why do people use drugs?
Reasons for beginning to use drugs
Altered Conscious Experience
Have a good time, feel good, relax, decrease boredom, relieve physical and emotional pain, seek greater awareness
Change in thinking, feeling, perceiving, & behaving
Increase awareness
Decrease awareness
A drug for every ailment

3. Definitions Risk factors Vulnerability
Individual or environmental factors that increase a person’s risk of drug use
Vulnerability
Idea that some people are differentially at risk
Resistance factors (Counter measures)
Lowers a person’s risk
Religion, academic success, good relationship with parents, contentment

4. Predisposing Factors Demographic Sociocultural – TV, movies
Age/gender
Family structure
Income
Education
Employment
Sociocultural – TV, movies
Adolescence
Curiosity
Personality/Coping
Changes & Conflict in Society
Heredity

5. Enabling Factors Availability Accessibility
Social & Institutional Deficiencies
Laws are ineffective
Personal & Professional Deficiencies
Don’t have skills to cope with pressures & insecurity
Peculiar Effects of Drugs
Psychoactive effects
Enablers
People who unknowingly support drug problem

6. Reinforcing Factors Pleasure To avoid bad sensations Functional needs
Positive reinforcement – Table 2.2 p. 33
To avoid bad sensations
Negative reinforcement – Fig.2.2 p. 34
Functional needs
Improve performance
Social / Peer Group
Advertising / Media

7. Public Health Model Theories
Agent-related etiology
Drugs cause dependence or addiction
Host-related etiology
Factors within the person cause drug use
Environment-related etiology
External factors lead to drug use
Multi-factorial – two or more of the above

8. Influence of Media
Advertisements
Celebrities
Sports
Movies