Drugs and deterrence

Abstract

People are thought to be deterred from behaviors by sanctions, or punishments, that follow from them. Bentham identifies four types of sanctions: political, moral, religious, and physical. In recent decades, a body of work has emerged that attempts to find a deterrent effect for crimes and how people are punished for committing them. In terms of illegal drugs, these studies are limited to how criminalization affects marijuana use. This thesis examines how drug use and dealing are affected by those four forms of sanctions. Interviews were conducted with fifteen individuals with widely varying histories of drug use and drug dealing. These interviews are used to determine how people’s perceptions of various sanctions affect their involvement, or lack thereof, in drug markets. The gathered data show that participants perceive friends and political sanctions as having the greatest deterrent effects on drug activity, although a variety of sanctions must all be applied at once for a person to terminate his or her drug activity usually. The thesis concludes by discussing the limitations of the present work and possibilities for future directions in the study of deterrence and drugs.