Control, Peer Association, and Permissive Attitudes to Drug Use: An Integrated Model Explaining Illicit Drug Use in China

ABSTRACT

Since 2014, synthetic drugs have replaced opioids to become the most popular illicit drugs in China. Objectives: To explain illicit drug use in contemporary China, this research develops an integrative theoretical model including control theories, differential association theory, and normalization theory. Methods: The study draws on the first-hand data collected from 716 drug users in four compulsory drug detoxification institutions in China. Results: Low self-control increases drug use frequency through the heightened association with drug-use friends and more permissive attitudes to drug use simultaneously. However, family attachment indirectly influences drug use frequency via more permissive attitudes to drug use but not drug-use friends. Conclusion & contribution: The results show that the influence of self-control and family attachment is fully mediated by drug-use friends and permissive attitudes to drug use. This study provides a detailed picture of the mechanism of how self- and social control influence drug use frequency and contributes to the larger body of scholarship integrating criminological theories to understand drug use behaviors in China. The implications of the findings for scientific and effective drug treatment programs are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Drug use
• integrated theoretical model
• control
• drug-use peers
• normalization
• China

Declaration of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Social Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong under the Seed Funding Support for Thesis Research and the Direct Grant (Code: 4052153). The author would like to thank Gaofeng Jin, Hua Zhong, Nicole Cheung, Andrew Hathaway, Haiyan Gao, Guolin Gu, and Mohid Iftikhar for their constructive suggestions on my research and my manuscript.