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Abstract
Respondents to a representative population survey were asked to rate four psychoactive substances (tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and ‘hard’ drugs) with regard to their severity to society and addictiveness, as well as the options for recovery, with and without treatment, from an addiction to the same substances. This article explores if and how these ratings differ with regard to respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics, their own and close persons’ substance use experiences, and, their attitudes towards people with substance use problems. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and logistic or linear regressions. Although the main difference goes between respondents’ perceptions of various substances and addictions, the results also point to some interesting differences with regard to respondents’ experiences and characteristics. Thus for example, women and respondents with no personal substance use experiences, tend to play up the severity and addictiveness of most substances, and to play down the options for untreated recovery from an addiction, whereas current risk users tend to take an opposite view. Main interpretations are that there is a general tendency to exaggerate the hazards of and risks with habits that are perceived as unfamiliar and alien, that current risk users at the same time dwell on a ‘false hope’ of being able to quit, and that women are, for various reasons, more inclined than men to worry about their own substance use habits, as well as those in their close environment. Potential implications, for further research as well as for policy and prevention, are discussed.
Notes
Notes
1. Alcohol, cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine, heroin, tobacco, (illegal use of) medical drugs and gambling.
2. It should be noted that Swedish lacks an obvious equivalent to the English term ‘addiction’, and that the questionnaire asked about missbruk och beroende (‘abuse of and dependence on’) various substances. As used in common language all these terms could be seen as ‘fat words’ (Christie & Bruun, Citation1969), denoting the same broad class of phenomena. The term ‘addiction’ as used in this text should be understood accordingly.
3. See further below.
4. Defined for men as drinking >14 standard glasses/week and for women as >9 standard glasses/week.
5. Officially defined as injecting drug at least once during the past year, and/or daily or almost daily use, during the past 30 days.
6. It may be reminded here that Christie and Bruun (Citation1985), in their seminal critique of Nordic drug policy, appoint narcotic drugs the ‘ideal enemy’, with which the large majority have no personal experiences, and which can thus be used as a scapegoat to divert their attention from more urgent, but politically more cumbersome issues, such as large unemployment among the young.
7. Since very few respondents consented to personal addiction experiences (except for tobacco dependence), only personal use experiences were included in the analyses. Risk drinking was not measured retrospectively.
8. Accept as a spouse, friend, co-worker and/or neighbour. Answers were summed to provide means for the rated distance towards alcohol and drug misusers, respectively, on a five-grade scale (larger value meaning large distance).
9. The response distributions as concerns the perceived severity to society of alcohol, cannabis and ‘hard’ drugs, as well as the perceived addictiveness of ‘hard’ drugs, and the options for quitting tobacco use on one's own, were too skewed to permit linear regressions. Thus, in these cases, the response variables were dichotomized (as close to 50/50 as possible), and logistic regressions were used.
10. Defined here as ‘binge drinking’ (5+ standard drinks on the same occasion) more than once a month (cf Cunningham, Blomqvist, Koski-Jännes, Cordingley, & Callaghan, Citation2004). Population data, using the same definition, are missing.
11. It should be noted that the variable ‘residential area’ does not show up in the tables at all, since it did not pass the inclusion criterion for the regression analyses in any of the bi-variate tests. As for close persons’ problematic substance use experiences, the only significant associations in the bi-variate tests were the ones between cannabis use experiences and the perceived severity and addictiveness of cannabis. However, neither of these associations gained significance in the multivariate context.