Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._1

DIVORCE

Divorces per 1000 married women

Divorce Rates in the United States

1940–1995

24.0
22.0
20.0
18.0
16.0
14.0
12.0
10.0
8.0
6.0
1940	1945	1950	1955	1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1995

Figure 1

SOURCE: Vital Statistics of the United States

lower age at marriage that characterized all Western nations after World War II are trends that have not been adequately explained. Whether these trends reflected the consequences of war, the effects of having grown up during the worldwide depression, or a short-term rise in social conservatism is now debated. Regardless of the cause, the decade of the 1950s is universally regarded as a temporary aberration in otherwise long-term and continuous twentieth century trends. Not until the 1960s were there additional significant changes in divorce laws or divorce rates.

The 1960s were years of significant social change in almost all Western nations. The demographic consequences of high fertility during the 1950s became most apparent in the large and vocal youth movements challenging conventional sexual and marital norms, censorship, the war in Vietnam, and educational policies. Challenges to institutional authority were commonplace. Divorce laws were not immune to the general liberalization.

‘‘Between 1960 and 1986 divorce policy in almost all the countries of the West was either completely revised or substantially reformed’’ (Phillips 1988, p. 562). Most such reforms occurred in the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Unlike earlier divorce law reforms, those during the post-World War II era did not extend the grounds for divorce so much as they redefined the jurisdiction over it. The passage

of no-fault divorce laws signaled a profound shift in the way divorce was to be handled.

Most significantly, divorce became the prerogative of the married couple with little involvement of the state. No-fault divorce laws do not require either spouse to be guilty of an offense. Instead, they focus on the breakdown of the emotional relationship between the spouses. These statutes typically require a period of time during which the spouses do not live together. Beyond that, evidence must be adduced to substantiate one or both spouses’ claim that the marriage is irretrievably broken. The significance of no-fault divorce lies entirely in the fact that decisions about divorce are no longer the prerogative of the state or church but rather of the married couple.

The passage of no-fault divorce laws in the West is properly viewed as a response to changing behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, social science research has shown that divorce rates began to increase significantly prior to passage of such laws and did not change any more dramatically afterward (Stetson and Wright 1975).

The changes in divorce law and actual divorce behaviors in the West are a reflection of the redefinition of marriage. More vulnerable and fragile emotional bonds have replaced the economic constraints that once held spouses together. The

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availability of gainful employment for women makes marriage less essential and divorce more possible. Indeed, the significant changes in women’s social positions and the corresponding changes in normative expectations (i.e., gender) have been the subject of significant sociological research. These changes are recognized as fundamentally altering almost all social institutions. Marriage is no exception.

The redefinition of marriage in the latter twentieth century throughout the West reflects the profound changes in relationships between men and women that have occurred. No longer an economic institution, marriage is now defined by its emotional significance. Love and companionship are not incidents of the institution. Rather, they are essentials. Meeting these high expectations may be difficult, but sustaining them is certainly more so.

Taken together, the changes in the second half of the twentieth century may be summarized as redefining the meaning of marriage. Children are not economic assets. Spouses are not economic necessities. Marriage is a conjugal arrangement where the primary emphasis is on the relationship between husband and wife. The reasons for divorce are direct consequences of the reasons for marriage. As one changes so does the other.

Since it is more difficult to accomplish and sustain matrimonial essentials, it is easier to terminate the legal framework surrounding them. Divorce has become less costly (financially, legally, and reputationally) as marriage has become more so

(in terms of the investments required to accomplish what is expected of it).

CORRELATES OF DIVORCE

Sociologists have documented a number of demographic and personal characteristics that correlate with the probability of divorce. These include early age at marriage, premarital births, premarital cohabitation, divorce from a previous marriage, and low educational attainments. Social class is inversely related to divorce, yet wives’ employment significantly increases divorce probabilities (see Huber and Spitze 1988 for a review).

Half of all recent marriages began with cohabitation (unmarried couples living together) (Bumpass and Sweet 1989). Repeated national studies have found that married couples who cohabited (either with each other, or with others) before marrying

have higher divorce rates than those who never cohabited (Nock 1995). The reason is still unclear.

Research shows that cohabiting individuals are less committed to the idea of marriage or marital permanence. They are also less religious and tend to be drawn from lower social classes (both of which are associated with higher divorce rates) (Nock 1995). Cohabitation appears to foster (or reflect) a belief that problems in intimate relationships are solvable by ending the relationship. When such beliefs are carried into marriage, the result is higher divorce rates.

Race correlates with divorce—even after controls are imposed for socioeconomic correlates of race—with black individuals having divorce rates approximately twice those of whites. However, such large differences associated with race are recent in origin. Not until the late 1950s did significant differences in divorce, separation, and other marital statuses emerge between blacks and whites, even though a pattern of marginally higher marital disruption has been found among blacks for at least a century. Such findings suggest that the differences stem more from contemporary than historical circumstances. As Cherlin suggests, the recent changes in black Americans’ family situations resemble those of other racial and ethnic groups, though they are more pronounced. The restructuring of the American economy, the decline in semi-skilled jobs, and the rise in service occupations has resulted in higher rates of black male unemployment or low wages, and better opportunities for black women. ‘‘Faced with difficult times economically, many blacks responded by drawing upon a model of social support that was in their cultural repertoire, a way of making it from day to day passed down by African Americans who came before them. This response relied heavily on extended kinship networks and deemphasized marriage’’ (Cherlin 1992, p. 113).

CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE

For Children. A central concern of much of the recent research on divorce is how children fare. Developmental psychologists describe five ways in which marital disruption may affect children’s adjustment. First, some adults and some children are more vulnerable to the stress and strain of divorce. Personality characteristics, ethnicity, or

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Divorce in Selected Countries, 1995

	5
	4.5
people	4
	3.5
	3
1000	2.5
	2
per
	1.5
Divorces	1
	0.5
	0
	Mexico	Canada	United	Japan	Czech	Germany	Hungary	Nether-	Spain	Sweden	Switzer-
			States		Republic			lands			land

Figure 2

SOURCE: United Nations 1996 Demographic Yearbook

age for example, may make some individuals more susceptible to negative outcomes. Second, the absence of one parent, per se, may affect children’s adjustment to divorce. Boys, in particular, appear to benefit from the presence of a male adult. Third, the loss of income creates many indirect problems for children, including changes in residence, school, neighborhood, and peer networks. Fourth, divorce often diminishes the custodial parent’s ability to provide supportive and appropriate parenting, especially if depression follows marital disruption. And finally, negative, conflictual, and dysfunctional family relationships between parents, parents and children, and siblings are probably the most damaging consequence of divorce for children. (Hetherington, Bridges, and Insabella 1998).

Longitudinal research has shown that children who experience divorce differ from others before the disruption occurs. Cherlin showed that children whose parents were still married, but who would later divorce, showed more behavior problems and did less well in school than children whose parents would remain married (Cherlin et al. 1991).

Even after such predisruption differences are considered, divorce takes a toll in the lives of children who experience it. Divorce significantly increases the chances that young people will leave their homes due to friction with a parent, increases

the chances of premarital cohabitation, and increases the odds of premarital pregnancies or fatherhood (Cherlin, Kiernan, and Chase-Lansdale 1995). The effects of divorce in young adulthood include higher rates of unemployment and lower educational attainments. Divorce weakens young people’s connections to their friends and neighbors due to higher rates of residential mobility

(McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). Following divorce, many children are subjected to changes in residence, often to disadvantaged neighborhoods where peers have lower educational prospects. The lack of connections to others affects parents’ ability to monitor their children. It also limits young people’s knowledge about local employment opportunities.

The changed economic circumstances caused by divorce affects children in many indirect ways.

The loss of available income may affect the quality of schools children attend if custodial parents move to poorer neighborhoods. The lack of income may limit children’s opportunities for extracurricular activities (e.g., travel, or music lessons). The need for income often compels custodial parents to work more hours, reducing their ability to monitor children’s after-school activities.

In their socioeconomic attainments, children who experienced their parents’ divorce average one to two fewer years of educational attainment than children from intact homes (Krein and Beller

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1988; Hetherington, Camara, and Featherman 1983). Such effects are found even after rigorous controls are imposed for such things as race, sex, years since the divorces, age at time of divorce, parental income, parental education, number of siblings, region of residence, educational materials in the home, or the number of years spent in the single-parent family. There are comparable effects of divorce on occupational prestige, income and earnings, and unemployment (Nock 1988).

White women who spent some childhood time in a single-parent family as a result of divorce are 53 percent more likely to have teenage marriages, 111 percent more likely to have teenage births, 164 percent more likely to have premarital births, and 92 percent more likely to experience marital disruptions than are daughters who grew up in two-parent families. The effects for black women are similar, though smaller. Controls for a wide range of background factors have little effect on the negative consequences of divorce. Further, remarriage does not remove these effects of divorce. And there is no difference between those who lived with their fathers and those who lived with their mothers after divorce. Experiencing parents’ divorce has the same (statistical) consequences as being born to a never-married mother (McLanahan and Bumpass 1988; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

Such large and consistent negative effects have eluded simple explanation. Undoubtedly much of the divorce experience is associated with the altered family structure produced—in almost 90 percent of all cases a single-mother family—and the corresponding changes in family functioning. Such a structure is lacking in adult role models, in parental supervision, and in hierarchy. On this last dimension, research has shown that divorced women and their children are closer (less distinguished by generational distinctions) to one another than is true in intact families. Parent and child are drawn together more as peers, both struggling to keep the family going. The excessive demands on single parents force them to depend on their children in ways that parents in intact families do not, leading to a more reciprocal dependency relationship (Weiss 1975, 1976). Single mothers are ‘‘. . . likely to rely on their children for emotional support and assistance with the practical problems of daily life’’ (Hetherington, Camara,

and Featherman 1983, p. 218). In matters of discipline, single mothers have been found to rely on restrictive (authoritarian as opposed to authoritative) disciplinary methods—restricting children’s freedom and relying on negative sanctions—a pattern psychologists believe reflects a lack of authority on the part of the parent (Hetherington 1972).

Whatever else it implies, the lack of generational boundaries means a less hierarchical family and less authoritative generational distinctions.

The institutional contexts within which achievement occurs, however, are decidedly hierarchical in nature. Education, the economy, and occupations are typically bureaucratic structures in which an individual is categorically subordinate to a su- perior—an arrangement Goffman described as an

‘‘eschelon authority structure’’ (1961, p. 42). The nuclear family has been described as producing in children the skills and attitudes necessary for competition within such eschelon authority relationships in capitalist production and family childrearing. ‘‘The hierarchical division of labor (in the economy) is merely reflected in family life’’ (Bowles and Gintis 1976, p. 144–147). The relative absence of clear subordinate-superordinate relationships in single-parent families has been argued to inadequately socialize children, or place them in a disadvantageous position when and if they find themselves in hierarchical organizations (Nock 1988).

For Adults. A wide range of psychological problems has been noted among divorcing and recently divorced adults. A divorce occasions changes in most every aspect of adult life; residence, friendship networks, economic situation, and parental roles. Marriage in America makes significant contributions to individual well-being. Thus, regardless of the quality of the marriage that ends, emotional distress is a near-universal experience for those who divorce (Weiss 1979). Anxiety, anger, and fear are dominant psychological themes immediately before and after divorce. At least for a year or two after divorce, men and women report psychosomatic symptoms of headaches, loss of appetite, overeating, drinking too much, trembling, smoking more, sleeping problems, and nervousness (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry 1980).

The emotional problems occasioned by divorce are accompanied by major changes in economic situations, as well—especially for women.

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The vast majority of those involved in divorce experience a significant decline in their immediate standard of living. This problem is especially acute for women who—in almost 90 percent of cases— assume custody of children. Immediately after a divorce, women suffer an average 30 percent to 40 percent decline in their overall standards of living (Hoffman and Duncan 1988; Peterson 1989). Either in anticipation of or as a consequence of divorce, there is typically an increase in divorced women’s labor force participation. Analyzing national longitudinal data, Peterson estimates that one year before the divorce decree (when most divorcing individuals are separated), women’s average standard of living (total family income divided by the poverty threshold for a family of a particular size) is 70 percent of its level in the previous year. As a consequence of increased hours worked, the standard of living increases one year after divorce and by five or six years after divorce, ‘‘the standard of living of divorced women is about 85 percent of what it had been before separation’’

(1989, p. 48). Women who have not been employed during their marriages, however, are particularly hard-hit; the majority ending up in poverty.

Child support payments are not a solution to the economic problems created by divorce for two reasons. First, about one-quarter (24 percent) of women due child support receive none (39 percent of men awarded child support receive none). Another one-quarter receive less than the courtordered amount. In 1991, the average amount of child support received by divorced mothers was $3,011 per year ($2,292 for men) (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1995). About 16.7 million, or 85 percent of the 19.8 million children in single-parent families in 1997 were living with the mother; 60 percent of whom were divorced (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1998a). Their median family income was $22,999 compared with $34,802 for those in single-father situations, and $51,681 for children in households where both parents were present (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1998a). Families headed by single mothers are the most likely to be in poverty, and represent 55 percent of all poor families. In 1997, a third (31.6 percent) of all single-mother families were in poverty compared to 5.2 percent of two-parent families (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1998b). Analyzing national longitudinal data, Duncan concluded that changes in

family status—especially divorce and remarriage— are the most important cause of change in family economic well-being and poverty among women and children (1984).

Single-parent families in America have grown dramatically as a result of increasing divorce rates. And even though most divorced persons remarry, Bumpass has shown that the average duration of marital separation experienced by children under age 18 was 6.3 years and 7.5 years for whites and blacks respectively. In fact 38 percent of white and 73 percent of black children are still in a singleparent family 10 years after the marital disrup- tion—a reflection of blacks’ lower propensity to remarry and their longer intervals between divorce and remarriage (1984). The role of divorce in the formation of single-parent families differs by race. Among all single-parent white families, 25 percent are maintained by never-married mothers, 47 percent by divorced (or separated) mothers, 7 percent by never-married men, and 13 percent by divorced or separated men. Among black single-parent families, 59 percent are maintained by never-married women, 28 percent by divorced or separated women, 4 percent by never-married men, and only 3 percent by divorced or separated men. Divorce is the primary route to single-parent- hood for white mothers, whereas out-of-wedlock childbearing is for black mothers (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1998c, Table 11; 1998d).

Families headed by single women with children are the poorest of all major demographic groups regardless of how poverty is measured.

Combined with frequent changes in residence and in employment following divorce, children and mothers in such households experience significant instabilities—a fact reflected in the higher rates of mental health problems among such women (Garfinkel and McLanahan 1986, pp. 11–17).

CONCLUSION

High rates of remarriage following divorce clearly indicate that marital disruption does not signify a rejection of marriage. There is no evidence of widespread abandonment of conjugal life by Americans. Admittedly, marriage rates have dropped in recent years. However, such changes are best seen to be the result of higher educational attainments,

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occupational commitments, and lower fertility expectations; not a rejection of marriage per se. Rather, increasing divorce rates reflect the fact that marriage is increasingly evaluated as an entirely emotional relationship between two persons. Marital breakdown, or the failure of marriage to fulfill emotional expectations, has come increasingly to be a cause for divorce. Since the 1970s, our laws have explicitly recognized this as justification for terminating a marriage—the best evidence we have that love and emotional closeness are the sine qua non of modern American marriage. Contemporary divorce rates thus signal a growing unwillingness to tolerate an unsatisfying emotional conjugal relationship.

The consequences of divorce for children are difficult to disentangle from the predictable changes in household structure. Whether the long-term consequences are produced by the single-parent situation typically experienced for five to ten years, or from the other circumstances surrounding divorce is not clear. It is quite apparent, however, that divorce occasions significant instabilities in children’s and mothers’ lives.

Our knowledge about the consequences of divorce for individuals is limited at this time by the absence of controlled studies that compare the divorced to the nondivorced. Virtually all research done to date follows the lives of divorced individuals without comparing them to a comparable group of individuals who have not divorced. A related concern is whether the consequences of divorce reflect the experience itself, or whether they re-

flect various selection effects. That is, are people who divorce different from others to begin with?

Are their experiences the results of their divorce, or of antecedent factors?

When almost half of all marriages are predicted to end in divorce, it is clear that marital disruption is a conspicuous feature of our family and kinship system. Divorce creates new varieties of kin not traditionally incorporated in our dominant institutions. The rights and obligations attached to such kinship positions as spouse of the noncustodial father are ambiguous—itself a source of problems. The social institution of the family is redefined as a consequence of divorce. Entering marriage, for example, is less commonly the beginning of adult responsibilities. Ending marriage is less commonly the consequence of death. Parents

are not necessarily co-residents with their children. And new categories of ‘‘quasi’’ kin are invented to accommodate the complex connections among previously married spouses and their new spouses and children. In many ways, divorce itself has become a dominant institution in American society. It is, however, significantly less structured by consensual normative beliefs than the family institutions to which it is allied.

REFERENCES

Bennett, Neil G., David E. Bloom, and Patricia H. Craig 1989 ‘‘The Divergence of Black and White Marriage Patterns.’’ American Journal of Sociology 95 (3):692–772.

Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis 1976 Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic Books.

Bumpass, Larry L. 1984 ‘‘Children and Marital Disruption: A Replication and Update.’’ Demography 21:71–82.

———, and James A. Sweet 1989 ‘‘National Estimates of Cohabitation.’’ Demography 26:615–625.

Cherlin, Andrew J. 1981 Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

———, F.F. Furstenberg, Jr., P.L. Chase-Lansdale, K.E. Kiernam, P.K. Robins, D.R. Morrison, and J.O. Teitler 1991 ‘‘Longitudinal Studies of Effects of Divorce on Children in Great Britain and the United States.’’ Science 252 (June 7):1386–1389.

Cherlin, Andrew J., Kathleen E. Kiernam, and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale 1995 ‘‘Parental Divorce in Childhood and Demographic Outcomes in Young Adulthood.’’ Demography 32 (No. 3):299–318.

Degler, Carl N. 1980 At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.

Duncan, Greg J. 1984 Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.

Garfinkel, Irwin, and Sara S. McLanahan 1986 Single Mothers and their Children. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press.

Goffman, Irving 1961 Asylums. New York: Anchor.

Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry 1980 Divorce, Child Custody, and the Family. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hetherington, E. Mavis 1972 ‘‘Effects of Paternal Absence on Personality Development in Adolescent Daughters.’’ Developmental Psychology 7:313–326.

———, Margaret Bridges, and Glendessa M. Insabella 1998 ‘‘What Matters? What Does Not? Five Perspectives on the Association Between Marital Transitions

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and Children’s Adjustment.’’ American Psychologist 53 (No.2):167–184.

Hetherington, E.M., K.A. Camara, and D.L. Featherman 1983 ‘‘Achievement and Intellectual Functioning of Children in One Parent Households.’’ In J. T. Spence, ed., Achievement and Achievement Motives, 205–284 San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

Hoffman, Saul D., and Greg J. Duncan 1988 ‘‘What are the Economic Costs of Divorce?’’ Demography 25:641–645.

Huber, Joan, and Glenna Spitze 1988 ‘‘Trends in Family Sociology.’’ In N. J. Smelser, ed., Handbook of Sociology. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Krein, Sheila F., and Andrea H. Beller 1988 ‘‘Educational Attainment of Children from Single-Parent Families: Differences by Exposure, Gender, and Race.’’ Demography 25:221–234.

Martin, Teresa C., and Larry L. Bumpass 1989 ‘‘Recent Trends in Marital Disruption.’’ Demography 26 (1):37–51.

McLanahan, Sara S., and Larry Bumpass 1988 ‘‘Intergenerational Consequences of Family Disruption.’’

American Journal of Sociology 94 (1):130–152.

National Center for Health Statistics 1998 FASTATS: ‘‘Divorce.’’ www.cdc.gov/nchswww/fastats/divorce.htm

Nock, Steven L. 1988 ‘‘The Family and Hierarchy.’’

Journal of Marriage and the Family 50 (Nov):957–966.

——— 1995 ‘‘A Comparison of Marriages and Cohabiting Relationships.’’ Journal of Family Issues 16:53–76.

Peterson, Richard R. 1989 Women, Work, and Divorce. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Phillips, Roderick 1988 Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Stetson, Dorothy M., and Gerald C. Wright, Jr. 1975 ‘‘The Effects of Law on Divorce in American States.’’

Journal of Marriage and the Family (August):537–547.

U.S. Bureau of the Census 1975 Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970. Part I. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

———1989 ‘‘Child Support and Alimony: 1985.’’ Current Population Reports. P-23, No. 154.

———1989 ‘‘Studies in Marriage and the Family.’’

Current Population Reports. P-23, No. 162.

———1995 ‘‘Who Receives Child Support?’’ Statistical Brief. www.census.gov/socdemo/www/chldsupp.html

———1998a ‘‘Money Income in the United States: 1997.’’ Current Population Reports. P-60, No. 200.

———1998b ‘‘Poverty in the United States: 1997.’’

Current Population Reports. P-60, No. 201.

———1998c ‘‘Household and Family Characteristics: 1997.’’ Current Population Reports. P-20, No. 515.

———1998d ‘‘Marital Status and Living Arrangements: 1997.’’ Current Population Reports. P-20, No. 506.

Weiss, Robert 1975 Marital Separation. New York: Ba-

sic Books.

———1976 ‘‘The Emotional Impact of Marital Separation.’’ Journal of Social Issues 32:135–145.

———1979 Going it Alone: The Family Life and Social Situation of the Single Parent. New York: Basic Books.

STEVEN L. NOCK

ALISON BURKE

DRAMATURGY

See Symbolic Interaction Theory.

DRUG ABUSE

Drug abuse has been a major social problem in the

United States for almost a century and we are now in the second decade of a continuing war on drugs.

Drug abuse is a health and criminal justice problem that also has implications for nearly every facet of social life. It is a major element in the high cost of health care, a central reason for the United

States’s extraordinarily high rate of incarceration, and a focus of intensive education and treatment efforts. Substance abuse is an equal-opportunity problem that affects both highand low-income persons, although its consequences are most often felt by those persons and communities that have the lowest social capital.

Substance abuse, with its connotations of disapproval or wrong or harmful or dysfunctional usage of mood-modifying substances, is a term that was developed in the United States. The more neutral term, dependence, is often used in other countries. Addiction, which formerly communicated the development of tolerance after use and a physical withdrawal reaction after a drug became unavailable, has assumed less explicit meanings. Whatever terminology is employed, there is intense societal concern about the use of psychoactive moodaltering substances that involve loss of control. This concern is manifest particularly for young people in the age group most likely to use such substances. Society is concerned that adolescents

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and young adults, who should be preparing themselves for crucial educational, vocational, and other significant life choices, are instead diverted by the use of controlled substances.

The United States has the highest rate of drug abuse of any industrialized country and, not surprisingly, spends more public money than any other country to enforce laws that regulate the use of psychoactive drugs. Its efforts to control drug abuse reach out across its borders. The United States also plays a critical role in developing knowledge about substance abuse; more than 85 percent of the world’s drug abuse research is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

EPIDEMIOLOGY

Information on incidence and prevalence of drug use and abuse derives from a range of sources: surveys of samples of households and schools; hospital emergency room and coroners’ reports; urine testing of samples of arrestees; treatment programs; and ethnographic studies. Such epidemiological information enables us to assess drug abuse programs and decide on allocation of resources (Winick 1997).

Since World War II, the peak years for illicit drug use were in the late 1970s, when approximately 25 million persons used a proscribed substance in any thirty-day period. Overall illicit drug use has been declining since 1985. The yearly

National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which is the most influential source of epidemiology data, reported that in 1997 marijuana was used by

11.1 million persons or 80 percent of illicit drug users (Office of Applied Studies 1999). Sixty percent only used marijuana but 20 percent used it along with another illicit substance. During the

1990s, the rate of marijuana initiation among youths aged twelve to seventeen reached a new high, of approximately 2.5 million per year. The level of current use of this age group (9.4 percent) is substantially less than the rate in 1979 (14.2 percent).

Twenty percent of illicit drug users in 1997, ingested a substance other than marijuana in the month preceding the interviews. Some 1.5 million Americans, down from 5.7 million in 1985, used cocaine in the same period; the number of crack users, approximately 600,000, has remained nearly constant for the last ten years. At least 408,000

individuals used heroin in 1997, with the estimated number of new users at the highest level in thirty years.

Data on incidence and prevalence of use must be interpreted in terms of social structure. Thus, one out of five of the American troops in Vietnam were addicted to heroin, but follow-up studies one year after veterans had returned to the United States found that only 1 percent were addicted

(Robins, Helzer, Hesselbrook et al. 1980). In Vietnam, heroin use was typically found among enlisted men and not among officers. Knowing such aspects of social setting and role can help in understanding the trends and can contribute to understanding the use of other substances in other situations. In any setting, the frequency of substance use, the length of time over which it was taken, the manner of ingestion, whether it was used by itself or with other substances, its relationship to criminal activity and other user characteristics (e.g., mental illness), the degree to which its use was out of control, the setting, and whether it was part of a group activity are also important.

Rates of use by subgroup can vary greatly.

Thus, for example, prevalence rates of drug use are higher among males than females and highest among males in their late teens through their twenties. Over half the users of illicit drugs work full time. About one-third of homeless persons and more than one-fourth of the mentally ill are physically or psychologically dependent on illicit drugs. The first survey of mothers delivering liveborns, in 1993, found that 5.5 percent had used illicit drugs at some time during their pregnancy. A survey of college students reported that in the previous year, 26.4 percent had used marijuana and 5.2 percent had used cocaine. National Household Survey data indicate that use of illicit drugs by persons over thirty-five, which was 10.3 percent in 1979, jumped to 29.4 percent by 1991 and was 33.5 percent in 1997.

Rates of cigarette smoking are of interest because of their possible relationship to the use of other psychoactive substances. Approximately oneeighth of cigarette smokers also use illicit drugs. In a typical month in 1997, 30 percent of Americans, or 64 million, had smoked cigarettes and one-fifth of youths between the ages of twelve and seventeen, were current smokers. Almost half of all

American adults who ever smoked have stopped

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smoking. Drug abusers may also be involved with alcohol.

POLICY

A central contributor to current American policy toward mood-modifying drugs was the Harrison Act of 1914, which prevented physicians from dispensing narcotics to addicts (Musto 1987). The

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 and strict penalties for sale and possession of narcotics that were imposed by federal legislation in 1951 and 1966 expanded punitive strategies. An important change took place in 1971, when President Nixon—who had campaigned vigorously against drug use—established a national treatment network. Nixon was the only president to devote most of the federal drug budget to treatment; his successors have spent most of the budget on law enforcement.

In 1972, the Commission on Marijuana and

Drug Abuse recommended a dual-focused policy that is both liberal and hard-line. The policy, which continues to the present, is liberal in that users who need help are encouraged to obtain treatment. But it is hard-line because it includes harsh criminal penalties for drug possession and sales. As a result, nearly two-thirds of the federal resources devoted to drug use are now spent by the criminal justice system to deter drug use and implement a zero-tolerance philosophy.

President Carter’s 1977 unsuccessful attempt to decriminalize marijuana was the only effort by a national political leader to lessen harsh penalties for drug possession. Between 1981 and 1986, President Reagan doubled enforcement budgets to

fight the ‘‘war on drugs.’’ Politicians generally have felt that the traditional hard-line policy served their own and the country’s best interests and there has been limited national support for legalization or decriminalization (Evans and Berent 1992).

Originating in several European countries, the policy of harm reduction has, during the last decade, generated growing interest in the United

States as a politically viable alternative to legalization (Heather, Wodak, Nadelmann et al. 1998). It attempts to understand drug use nonevaluatively in the context of people’s lives and to urge that the policies that regulate drug use should not lead to more harm than the use of the substance itself causes. A representative harm-reduction initiative

is the establishment of needle exchanges, for injecting users of heroin and other drugs, in order to minimize the possibility of HIV transmission resulting from the sharing of infected needles. The use of needles to inject illegal substances has been linked to one-third of the cumulative number of

AIDS cases in the United States. In the United

States, the use of federal government money for needle exchanges is prohibited, although there are approximately 1.3 million injecting drug users. Critics of these programs believe that such exchanges increase heroin use and send a latent message that it is acceptable to use drugs like heroin. Harm reductionists disagree and argue that needle exchanges lead to a decline in rates of HIV infection without encouraging use.

Another policy disagreement between America and other countries involves marijuana. In the

United States many federal benefits, including student loans, are not available to those convicted of marijuana crimes. In contrast, marijuana has been decriminalized in a number of Western European countries, including Italy, Spain, and Holland. It is openly available in coffee houses in Holland, where officials believe that its use is relatively harmless and can deter young people from using heroin or cocaine. In America, marijuana is viewed by federal authorities as possibly hazardous and a potential ‘‘stepping stone’’ to heroin or cocaine use, and approximately 695,000 persons were arrested for its possession in 1997.

Other countries have experimented with ways to make drugs such as heroin legally available, albeit under control. Thus, in Switzerland, heroin addicts have been legally maintained. In England, methadone (a heroin substitute) can be obtained by prescription from a physician. In the United States, by contrast, an addict must enroll in a program to be able to receive methadone.

In the United States prevention of drug abuse has never been as important a policy dimension as treatment or law enforcement, in part because it requires legislators to commit resources in the present to solve a future problem. Prevention has, thus, accounted for less than one-seventh of the drug abuse budget. Because of the variety of prevention approaches and because of the American local approach to education, there are many viewpoints on how to conduct programs that will prevent young people from becoming drug users and

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abusers. An information-didactic approach, often with the assistance of law enforcement personnel, has been traditional. A role-training, peer-orient- ed, values-clarification, alternatives, affective-edu- cation approach emerged in the 1970s, along with psychological inoculation. Addressing the social structure and family in which young people live, and targeted community action, attracted substantial support in the 1980s and 1990s.

National policy toward drug use is systematically promulgated by the Office of National Drug

Control Policy (1999). The office has established the goal of reducing drug use and availability by 50 percent and reducing the rate of related crime and violence by 30 percent by 2007. It is proposed that these goals will be achieved by expanding current approaches.

Although drug abuse has been called ‘‘the

American disease,’’ physicians have had little impact on policy. Between 1912 and 1925, clinics in various states dispensed opiates to users. More recently, however, the federal government has opposed making marijuana available for medicinal purposes, even to treat persons with terminal or debilitating illnesses. Nevertheless, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s and others, by referendum vote in the 1990s, have permitted physicians to recommend and patients to use marijuana medically.

CONTROL

In the United States, programs to control the supply of mood-modifying substances are intended to interdict the importation of illicit materials, enforce the laws, and cooperate with other countries that are interested in minimizing the availability of controlled substances. In addition to illicit substances (such as heroin, that has no established medical use), prescription products can be abused. These include substances such as barbiturates, that are used without medical supervision in an inappropriate manner. The problem also includes over-the-counter drug products that are not used for the purpose for which they were manufactured. Some nondrug substances like airplane model glue and other inhalants that can provide a

‘‘high’’ and are difficult to regulate, are also considered part of the country’s substance abuse burden.

Preventing illicit drugs from entering the United States is difficult because of heavily trafficked, long, porous borders. Large tax-free profits provide incentives for drug entrepreneurs to develop new ways to evade customs barriers, process the drug for the market, and sell it (Johnson, Goldstein,

Preble et al. 1985). For example, approximately seven-eighths of the retail price represents profit after all costs of growing, smuggling, and processing cocaine for illegal sale in the United States. The increasing globalization of the world economy further facilitates the international trade in illicit substances.

A key component in efforts to reduce the supply of stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens is the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act of 1970, which established a national system of schedules that differentiated the public health threat of various drugs of abuse. This law, which has been modified over the years, classifies controlled substances into five categories, based on their potential for abuse and dependency and their accepted medical use. Schedule I products, such as peyote, have no acceptable safe level of medical use. Schedule II products, such as morphine, have both medicinal value and high abuse potential. Schedule III substances, such as amphetamines, have medical uses but less abuse potential than categories I or II. Also acceptable medicinally, Schedule IV substances, such as phenobarbital have low abuse potential, although the potential is higher than Schedule V products, such as narcotics that are combined with non-narcotic active ingredients. Conviction for violation of federal law against possession or distribution of scheduled products can lead to imprisonment, fines, and asset forfeiture.

Ever since it assumed a major role in promoting the Hague Opium Convention of 1912, the United States has been a leader in the international regulation of drugs of abuse. The United States convened the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Some countries, like England and Holland, subscribe to the treaties but interpret them more liberally than does the United States. The

United States has also provided technical assistance, financing, and encouragement to other countries to minimize the growth of drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. Programs have been conducted in Mexico and Turkey to eradicate these

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