Describe the relationship between gender and illegal drug use in the United States. What are the two factors that help to explain why drug use rates may vary by gender?

What will be an ideal response?


While just over 50% of young U.S. women have ever used an illegal drug, over 60% of young men have done so. Thus, men are more likely to become experienced with illegal drugs. Fewer than 30% of young U.S. women have used illegal drugs in the past year; over 40% of young men have done so.
Answers to the second part of the question will vary, but may include:
some of this difference has to do with the fact that young men are often offered greater opportunities to begin drug use within their peer networks;
binge drinking can be a means for men to make claims of masculinity through stamina, willingness to take risks, power, strength, and outperforming peers or winning a social competition. This is part of the reason U.S. society experiences many more deaths from alcohol poisoning among men than among women. The gender disparity in alcohol-induced fatalities is a direct result of our cultural framing of alcohol consumption as an act with gendered meanings; and
processes leading to drug use and termination from it can be partially explained by gender socialization. Women exit a drug career for family reasons and if it interferes with work responsibilities more often than do men. Women's stopping drug use tends to center on the personal and emotional aspects of drug experiences, while men's cessation is more directly related to external and financial factors.

Sociology

You might also like to view...

In this chapter, the authors discuss a strategy for preparing notes that involves two main distinct types. They are:

A. Interaction notes and observation notes. B. Formal activity notes and informal activity notes. C. Descriptive notes and analytic memos. D. Verbatim notes and paraphrased notes. E. Research-question notes and serendipity memos.

Sociology

Which one of the following is an assumption underlying labeling theory?

a. Definitions of deviance are consistent across cultural settings. b. Rules are enforced uniformly and consistently. c. Deviants are those whose behavior someone has noticed, labeled as such, and to which sanctions have been applied. d. Deviant behavior is learned in the same way conforming behavior is learned.

Sociology

The family serves the purpose of socializing the young, regulating sexual behavior, and providing care and emotional support to its members. From a functionalist point of view, these are of the family

a. functions b. dysfunctions c. conflicts d. purposes

Sociology

What is the effect on the marriage rate of economic uncertainty and high inflation?

a. increases the marriage rate b. reduces the marriage rate c. has no effect on the marriage rate d. curvilinear pattern—first increasing, then decreasing

Sociology