Drug culture expertise and substance use

This study concerns the relationship between knowledge of drug culture and substance use. Results from a sample of 2,635 middle and high school students indicate that (1) knowledge of drug culture is positively correlated with substance use; (2) drug knowledge is more reliable and coherent in older youth; (3) drug knowledge is unrelated to other kinds of knowledge acquired in school; (4) youth exposed to peers' substance use in school have more drug knowledge; and (5) the earlier young people begin using drugs and alcohol, the more they know about the drug culture. Results suggest that knowledge of the drug culture may be an unobtrusive indicator of substance use problems.This project was made possible by a grant from the Tulsa Psychiatric Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include school dropouts, substance use, delinquency, identity, narcissism, and health. To whom correspondence should be addressed.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include school dropouts, substance use, delinquency, personal commitments, identity, narcissism, and health.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include moral development and personality.     

“Value Grabbing”: A Political Ecology of Rent

This paper aims to redress the under-appreciated significance of rent for political ecological analysis. We introduce the notion of value grabbing, defined as the appropriation of (surplus) value through rent. A concept that is analytically distinct from accumulation, rent is both a social relation and a distributional process that is increasingly central to the reproduction of contemporary capitalism. Emphasis is placed on the “grabbing” of value in order to shed light on the processes at work by which surplus value is distributed unevenly between different classes and fractions of classes. A focus on rent within political ecology, we argue, can help us distinguish between two organically related but analytically distinct “moments”: (a) the creation of property rights that establish rent relations and (b) the struggle over the appropriation and distribution of surplus value generated by the rent relation itself. We explore some of the implications of this perspective for understanding new forms of socio-ecological struggles and their varied relations to the state. We maintain that a value-grabbing perspective has far-reaching consequences for political ecology, as it provides a sharp conceptual tool for situating a wide range of socio-ecological conflicts and movements as class struggles over value appropriation and distribution.     

Why do adolescents use drugs? Age,sex, and user differences

This paper makes four points: (1) There is substantial substance use among adolescents in our large rural southwestern sample. (2) Adolescents explain their drug use with five kinds of reasons (i.e., Belonging, Coping, Pleasure, Creativity, and Aggression). (3) Different reasons for using drugs are related to frequency of substance use. (4) There are age, gender, and user differences in the reasons adolescents have for their drug use. After summarizing traditional ways of thinking about drug use, we describe an alternative way for examining such behavior. We use this approach to study relationships between drug use reasons and age, gender, and substance use in 2637 6th–12th-grade students. We then discuss prevention and treatment implications of this research.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include school dropouts, substance use, delinqueccy, personal commitments, health, and identity.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include at-risk youth, substance use, delinquency, narcissism, and identity.Received Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in personality psychology. Research interests include moral development and personality.     

The Unscientific Determinants of Voting on a Controversial Scientific Issue: An Evaluation of Biofuels Policy in the U.S. Congress

Whether allegiance to party or the preferences of constituents are most important in an elected representative's voting decision has been a long‐running question in political science. This study contributes to this debate through an evaluation of biofuels policy in the U.S. Congress. Results indicate that in this policy area the House and Senate balance these influences differently, with partisanship playing a significant role in the House but not in the Senate. Analysis of voting on this issue indicates that there are important distinctions between how a legislator views the overall partisan preferences of constituents in their district or state versus how they view the interests of particular groups of constituents; when the concentration of agricultural interests in a legislator's district or state is great enough, it can override the effects of party for this issue, which suggests that legislators are especially concerned with specific constituency groups in their district or state that would stand to gain or lose from a policy. The proposition that a legislator is most likely to do that which benefits him or her most regardless of the available science relevant to a policy is a useful starting point for understanding what has been found in this research project.