<論文>リンドスミスによる麻薬研究の二つの位相 : 相互作用論的麻薬使用研究の射程

Abstract

Alfred R. Lindesmith is one of the most important sociologists who have studied the drug use. His studies of drug use can be divided into two phases. The one(1) is about the sociological theory of drug addiction, the other(2) is about the medical programs to treat the addict. (1) His theory of drug addiction is based on the perspective of symbolic interactionism which is originated in G.H. Mead and the logic of J. Dewey. He adopted the analytic induction to make the hypothesis of drug addiction, and maintained that the most important factor to become an addict is not the knowledge about the drug which he/she takes but the knowledge about the withdrawal symptoms. He also maintained that one cannot become an addict until he/she recognizes that the symptoms are caused by the abstention from the drug and that the additional use of the drug relieves them. (2) His assertion that the addict should be treated as a patient was largely based on his analysis of the British system for the addict. In the United States, the addictive use of drugs was crime. But in England, the addictive use of drugs was a disease. The result of the British policy was that there was little underworld for the addict. So Lindesmith asserted that the addict should be treated as a patient, not as an offender. It meant that the criminal designation (=criminalization) of drug addiction should be placed by the medical designation (=medicalization) of addiction. But his assertion of medicalization is against his sociological theory of drug addiction. One of the most important implications of his theory is that addiction is not a medical problem but an interactional or cultural problem. Thus his assertion was based not on his theory but on his morality. And the reason why he had to make his choice was derived from the feature of the perspective of the interactionism. With the perspective of the interactionism, the deviant is deviant because he is thought to be. So the interactionist have to adopt the standard to judge the deviant to be deviant from the environment as Lindesmith did, when he/she wants to be as a sociologist of deviant behavior.