How can we explain the attitudes of young drug users towards the risks involved?

This post is the sixth in a series of discussions with Ruth, a mental health nurse who has worked with drug users in prisons and hospitals. There is a brief summary of earlier post in the series, on my other blog.


Ruth began the discussion by considering whether her own history might help us understand why kids engage in risky behaviour:

When I worked in the prison system, I participated in activities such as bungy jumping and solo trekking through the Himalayas and so on. These are risky activities. They differ from drug taking because they are socially acceptable. But they are similar because they involve a risk of being injured or killed. I saw myself as capable in extreme situations. It felt good!

My attitude toward risk-taking has changed since I stopped working in the prisons. I now experience greater fear of heights and tend to allow that fear to dictate my actions. For example, I was walking down some steps – the open variety – descending about 100 metres underground last year. I was terrified, simply of the height, as I looked down to see where to put my foot next. Vertigo had got me – and not for the first time in my life. Yet, only a few years prior, I had bungy jumped off the side of a swing bridge over a river.

The only difference I can point to is that I am now engaged in less risky activities on a daily basis. I experienced great fear on both occasions, but it seems to me that I was accustomed to taking risks back then. Now I am out of practice, so to speak.

This makes me wonder if young drug users see drug-taking as a measured risk - just as the risk of trekking solo through the Himalayas or bungy jumping or so many other things I did, mirrored the risks I took working in the prison. A lot of drug users may consider that the risks involved are not out of the ordinary, relative to the risks that are part of their daily lives. This might explain why so many argue that drug use is quite safe.

I expect that many could relate some of what Ruth has been saying to their own experience. I know that when I took on new roles at work that required me to get out of my comfort zone, this also affected other aspects of my life. If we think in terms of identity economics, a change of role may be associated with a change of perceived identity, which in turn has implications for the satisfaction we obtain from different kinds of behaviour and the choices we make.

Tammy Anderson, a sociologist, has developed a cultural-identity theory of drug abuse which suggests that drug abuse is the outcome of an identity change process. The process may involve a range of factors relating to personal circumstances, identification with sub-cultures and economic opportunity. For example, at a personal level some kids may feel out of place and different from others, or a loss of control in defining their own identity because of unrealistic parental expectations. This may lead them to identify with alternative social groups i.e. a drug sub-culture. In turn, this provides a new identity, with acceptance by a peer group and associated economic opportunities to fund drug use. (‘A cultural identity theory of drug abuse’, here)

In my view, while such a cultural-identity perspective makes sense, it would be desirable for it to be embedded into an identity economics framework in order to recognize the role of individual choice in these personal changes.

Ruth comments:

My experiences mostly centre around drug takers after their habit has become a noticeable problem. Although I know less about the introductory phase of drug taking or experimentation, I have worked with many teens (mostly girls but some boys too) who have lived through sequential painful experiences and have given up on the idea of living free of ongoing emotional pain. Young people in these situations may welcome any mind numbing activity just to escape the hurtful lives they live. This is not about immaturity or lack of worldliness or some other non-reality oriented scenario. I'm referring to situations where there are real reasons for the emotional pain they feel. Many are still too young to leave home and are therefore doomed to continue living in circumstances that are painful to them until they come of age.

The young people I've had most regular contact with have long dispensed with the idea that they can change themselves, or their life circumstances. They have usually had limited exposure to the idea that they can consciously create a life for themselves and much less exposure to ideas about how they might do such a thing. In their own eyes their identity is defined and absolutely limited to what they are now and has been determined indisputably and irrevocably by the circumstances of their birth and upbringing.

From the therapy side, I see these self-perceptions as an excuse to avoid dealing with what the individuals see as an unchangeable future. As these limiting perceptions change then they see that they have greater potential to change their lives than they realized. It would be helpful if the community as a whole could adopt a similar approach to these people.

I found that talking to these patients about travel adventures like trekking the Himalayas and Swiss Alps and so on can make a difference to their long term projections for their own lives. The potential to have that kind of adventure can be enough for them to think it is worth getting through their ordeal. They often turn off drugs as a direct result - not always, but often. What is happens is that their confidence builds in a natural way. I could point out how 'ordinary' I was, much like themselves, and how I went about achieving my goals – the usual methods of planning, practicing and reading relevant material and talking to others who had done similar things. This led the patients to see a whole new set of possibilities - which in turn opened options and gave them confidence to act differently, and with choice.

Confidence and choice are at the heart of every behavioural decision. I suspect identity building is limited by an assumption of 'who I am' in the world around me.

The discussion continues here.

Does Australia also have a ruling class?

In his article, ‘America’s ruling class – and the perils of revolution’, Angelo Codevilla suggests that Democrat and Republican office-holders in recent governments in the United States ‘show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits and opinions ... than between both and the rest of the community’. He claims: ‘They think, look, and act like a class’ (‘The American Spectator, July-August 2010).


I think the article provides a good explanation of why Americans who normally support the Republican Party are currently so disenchanted with it. Perhaps Australians should be thinking about possible implications for politics in this country.

Characteristics of this class identified by Codevilla include the following:
• ‘Its first tenet is that “we” are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained’.
• Its only standard of truth is consensus among its members. It does not take seriously the views of anyone - irrespective of professional competence, academic achievement, wealth or office held – unless they are members of the class. Like a fraternity, the ruling class requires its members to share the manners and tastes of the class.
• It views the common people’s words as ‘like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure and frustration’.
• It stakes its claim to power through intellectual-moral pretence but holds power through patronage – increasing the power of government to increase its own power and reward its supporters.
• It includes among its number people who have been chosen by government to be the true representatives of various sectors of society and who have been empowered to represent those sectors in elaborating laws and administrative rules.
• It seeks to make itself the arbiter of wealth and poverty by making economic rules dependent on the discretion of office holders who are members of the ruling class.
• It redirects the people’s energies away from satisfying their own desires – toward living more densely and closer to work, driving smaller cars, using less energy, improving their diet etc.
• It assumes that what it mandates with regard to education and welfare of children must be correct ipso facto, while what parents do is potentially abusive.
• ‘Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others’ comprehension’.
• It identifies science and reason with itself and pronounces definitive scientific judgment on whatever it chooses. Aggressive, intolerant secularism is the moral basis of its claim to rule.
• It interferes in the affairs of foreign governments that are not the enemies of America.
• It favours ever higher taxes and expanding government.

Before I go further, I think a confession may be in order. Some of those points describe attitudes I held 40 years ago. I’m not proud of that, but at the time I thought that Commonwealth public servants were the best and the brightest in the land and that they should have more power.

Another point I should make is that it is important to distinguish between opposition to ruling class attitudes and support for populist attitudes. In my view the words of non-experts on complex economic issues do have little more value than a grunt. Whether we are talking about economic policy, brain surgery or plumbing, I think it should be self-evident that the views of experts count for more than those of non-experts. The problem with the ruling class is not its lack of regard for the views of non-experts, but its lack of regard for the views of experts who do not accept that it has a right to interfere in the way citizens live their lives.

Coming to the question I posed at the beginning, it is obvious from what I have already written that I think Australia does have a self-appointed ruling class as described above. This ruling class is identified most closely with the public service and the political left, including the Greens as well as the Labor Party.

However, I don’t think the conservative side of Australian politics is as closely identified with the ruling class as in the US. When he came to office, John Howard was viewed as an outsider by the ruling class. This antipathy remained until his government was voted out of office, even though his policies were by then virtually indistinguishable from those of the ruling class. Tony Abbott, the current leader of opposition, seems to want to maintain distance himself from the ruling class rather than to disempower it. His recent book, discussed here, is a strange mixture of support for traditional family values, classical liberalism and espousal of ruling class attitudes toward centralization of power in Canberra.

What distribution principle would you choose behind a veil of ignorance?

In his book, ‘A Theory of Justice’, John Rawls considered what principles of justice would be agreed upon by all behind a veil of ignorance in which no one knows their place in society - their wealth, their class position or social status, their intelligence, strength, state of health etc. One of the principles that Rawls argued would be agreed upon is the ‘difference principle’ – that social and economic inequalities should exist only insofar as they benefit the least well off members of society.

I think the veil of ignorance thought experiment is useful to consider public policy issues from a perspective that is broader than my own perceived interests. When I do this thought experiment, however, I don’t endorse the difference principle (sometimes referred to as the maximin principle). The principle I come up with is to maximize the opportunities of any person chosen at random, subject to provision of a safety net to protect the well-being of the least well off members of society. I expect that some critics would say, however, that I get this outcome because I am not doing the thought experiment properly.

A study undertaken by Hörisch Hannah a couple of years ago does not seem to have the same potential for personal bias to influence the results obtained. Hannah implemented the Rawlsian veil of ignorance in a laboratory experiment using variants of the dictator game (see: ‘Is the veil of ignorance only a concept about risk? An experiment’, Munich Discussion Paper No 2007-4). In the first experiment, one player, the dictator, decides how much of the pie will be received by the other player, given an efficiency loss of 50 percent for units that are transferred from the dictator to the receiver. The veil of ignorance is implemented by requiring each player to decide how much to give to the other player before being assigned the role of dictator or receiver (with equal probability). The second experiment is the same as the first except that the role of receiver is not actually assigned to a person so the outcome can be interpreted as a self-interested response to risk.

Only a minority of subjects opted for the maximin principle under either experiment. The vast majority of male participants perceived the veil of ignorance as introducing only risk. Among women participants, however, impartial social preferences were a second significant motivation that induces stronger concern for equality.

Although I think the results of the study are extremely interesting, they can hardly be presumed to reflect universal values. The study is quite small, with only 167 participants (all university students). There may be potential for bias because about two-thirds of respondents have studied some economics. It would be interesting to see results for similar studies, for people of different ages and backgrounds in different countries.

It would also be interesting to know whether there is any link between the values that people display when they play this game and their political views. Are the views of individual voters strongly influenced by principles that they support irrespective of their own perceived interests? If so, then perhaps politicians are whistling the wrong tune (or whistling to the wrong dog) when they are seen all the time to be responding to rent-seeking by narrow interest groups.

Difficult questions Part V: How effective is anti-drugs advertising?

In a recent post I discussed the question of whether identity economics might help to improve understanding of teenage drug use. I have been discussing this question with Ruth, a nurse who has cared for drug users in psych wards. In this post Ruth comments on the effectiveness of anti-drugs advertising.


I kicked off the discussion by suggesting that one possible implication of identity economics is that anti-drugs advertising would not be likely to make much of an impression on kids unless they see the story it is telling as being relevant to people like themselves.

Ruth comments:

Anti drug advertising has failed miserably and may have been counter-productive. I say this because many teens see these ads and it simply reminds them of what they imagine their friends to be doing right now and sets up the desire to be with those friends and partaking in their shared drug taking – a mostly enjoyable activity. It's like advertising positively for things like chocolate or a holiday destination – you see it, you want it.

The words are heard as nagging noises and are ignored. The images incite memories that are attractive.

No-one sees an ugly person suffering on TV and relates the image to themselves – kids see the ugly person as a looser, not like themselves at all. This is particularly so when the ad comes on TV, interrupting unpleasant thoughts or conversations previously going on for the teen.

The Australian anti-drug advertising that Ruth is talking about can easily be found by searching on Google for ‘anti-drugs advertising Australia’. Such a search also provides references to research supporting Ruth’s view that anti-drugs advertising may have been counter-productive.

When I looked again at the advertising my first thought was that showing kids the bad things that could happen if they take drugs must have some impact. The message, ‘You don’t know what drugs will do to you’ is the kind of message I would like teenagers to think about. I must admit, however, that I would not be discouraged from drinking alcohol by the message, ‘You don’t know what alcohol will do to you’, accompanied by images of alcoholics. The message would conflict with what I perceive from my own experience to be likely to happen to me if I continue to engage in moderate drinking.

Ruth concludes:

I've never found a drug user – social user or not – who relates to the characters in those ads, nor have I found anyone who sees themselves as a potential for the advertised risk. Even if they are in it over their heads already. Those who cite the ads as incentives for getting off the drugs state things like 'I saw that happen to my friend and I want to get off for his sake' or 'I know they say that could happen to me, but it won't. I'm smarter than that'. I've always found it interesting that drug users (and dealers) use terminology about their intelligence when defending their position.

The discussion continues here.