Final Paper

Social Research on the Illegal use of Drugs and its Prominence among Males

This paper compares scholarly research with lay opinion on the subject of illegal drugs and why men use them more then women. A review of the research about illegal drugs and males shows that males use drugs more often and earlier then females. This is based on certain social factors like alcohol use, reckless behavior, and marijuana use. I created and distributed a short online survey to thirty people in order to obtain a general sense of lay opinion of illegal drugs and how they affect males. I found that survey showed that most people’s opinions were that males do more illegal drugs then females. This was backed up by scholarly social research. This paper is constructed to review the scholarly research of Illegal drugs and why males are affected more than females. I then took the information on that subject and compared it with the opinions of the average person. I did this by conducting a survey and recording their responses to some key survey questions. This research is important to find out why illegal drug use affects gender how it does, in order to possibly look at the causes in order to possibly come up with a solution to the problem. There is a literature review contained in this paper. This literature review is a summary of all the research conducted by scholars on the topic of illegal drug use among males. This research was conducted through Google Scholar from credited peer reviewed articles and journal entries. The survey measured the layperson’s opinion on this subject. The overall opinion showed that most respondents somewhat agreed with the statement that “Males do more illegal drugs then women” and “Males are likely to use illegal drugs at a younger age then females”. Most of the scholarly research I conducted supported these two statements which agreed with the layperson’s opinion from my survey. Overall the research points to certain factors include Age, Alcohol use, and gender causing Males to Use more illegal drugs then Females. Everybody is a drug user. Men and women alike use drugs whether there used for health reasons or illegally to get high. Gender plays a large role however, in who uses more drugs. Even though drug use among women is rising, males, overall use more illicit or illegal drugs. This might not surprising but the real question is why? Why do men use more drugs then women? This can be explained a couple different ways. The amount of prescription drugs sales around the world total about 640 billion dollars. These are drugs that help people live and maintain a healthy and normal lifestyle day in and day out. For this, everyone is thankful that drug companies are constantly researching new drugs and coming up with ways to improve life. As always though, where there is good, there is bad. Drug abuse runs rampant around the world, especially in the United States. Around 17.4% of Americans abuse illicit drugs.(Anderson) that’s around 53 million people abusing drugs. Of these 53 million people men are more likely abusing these drugs. That means out of the 53 million people, over half of them are males.(Rengert) This is a large amount of males that are abusing drugs compared to women. Why are men abusing drugs the most? Alcohol may be the first way of explaining the difference in drug use by gender. Kids throughout high schools across America are stealing liquor from their parents or having someone older buy them liquor. Kids are drinking alcohol at parties to fit in and be cool. Males Between the ages of 12 and 17 years old, 2.3% of males are drinking alcohol in heavy amounts compared to 1.9% of females at the same age. The use of alcohol at an early age can set the stage for later patterns of abuse. If males adopt a lifestyle of excessive alcohol abuse early on, then what is to say when they try something else, for example an illegal drug, they wont adopt an abusive lifestyle with that? Due to this, early abuse of alcohol among males could be one reason why males grow up to abuse illicit drugs. Marijuana may also be to blame for drug abuse. Yes, marijuana is an illicit drug, so how can it be the cause of its own abuse? Marijuana, which is now becoming legalized in certain areas, is a popular drug among many. Long considered a “gateway” drug, marijuana has been used to explain the introduction to other and more harmful drugs. This is exactly how marijuana is the cause of more drug abuse by men. Men are younger than women when they start using marijuana.(Lowery) Men are more likely to use marijuana as well. Males make up 8.6% of the population who use marijuana, while females only make up 4.8%.(Grella) this is almost double. If double the amount of males are using marijuana that means double is using this gateway drug, increasing the chances of abusing a more serious drug. (Paragraph 5) Another explanation is how males are introduced to any drug use. Males are introduced to drugs usually by a friend. Males are more likely to use drugs because they are curious and a little more reckless in their behavior.(Robbins) Females however, aren’t as likely to just try drugs, and are usually introduced by someone they are in a relationship with. Males have more of a reckless behavior and first tried at a younger age. Females are more mature and can make better decisions which can deter their drug use.

The purpose of this survey was to compare lay people's opinions on a question with what social science research has found about illegal drug use and how that is affected by gender. This survey was primarily issued to gain the respondents beliefs and opinions on this issue. The survey was not intended to collect actual information. Creating a full survey to collect actual information would not have been realistic in this class. The answers from the respondents are just a small sample of my friends, family and acquaintances, and because of this cannot give a proper sample size in order to full answer and understand the subject. Instead the information coming from this survey is being used to supplement the research that was conducted. In order to see if the research was relevant, a survey was setup and sent out. By using the program Google Docs, I was able to construct an online survey. The population of this survey was thirty respondents of my friends, family and acquaintances. The sample was chosen unscientifically, with a non-zero probability. For my survey the population was not defined and the respondents were not chosen in a systematic fashion. A scientific survey would be too taxing. I took the respondents answers once only. This would constitute a cross sectional survey instead of a longitudinal survey where the information would have been collected twice. I conducted this survey to collect data to see how the lay person viewed illegal drug use in regards to gender. In order to determine this I gave the respondents two statements. The first statement was, “Men use more illegal drugs then women”. The respondents then were asked to respond to this statement with four answer choices. The answer choices were as followed, “Strongly Agree”, “Somewhat Agree”, Somewhat Disagree”, and “Strongly Disagree”. The second statement was “Men are more likely to use illegal drugs younger then women”. Again the respondents could choose, “Strongly Agree”, “Somewhat Agree”, “Somewhat Disagree”, and “Strongly Disagree”.

After creating the survey and distributing it to people to respond to, I collected all of the responses for analysis. This was completed by creating frequency tables for the two key research questions. A frequency table collects the responses from the respondents and organizes the data too show how many responses each answer option received. This is very helpful in analyzing the data. A frequency table takes this information and puts it in a organized table which allows one to look and interpret the results of the survey question. I used the frequency tables for the two key research questions. I also used another form of data analysis with the results from my survey. I created a cross tabulation table. The cross tabulation table takes a question and shows how respondents answered according to another variable. For instance, my two cross tabulation tables show how respondents answered the two key research questions based on gender as well as education. By using cross tabulation tables it allows for the information to be broken down a little further for analysis.
Table 1 shows the frequency distribution on the answers to whether people believe that men are more likely to do illegal drugs then women. Overall 60% responded Somewhat agree and 30% responded strongly agree making up 90% of the respondents.

Table 1. Frequency Distribution on agreement/disagreement on statement “Men are more likely to use illegal drugs than woman”.

|Strongly Agree | |9 |30% |
|Somewhat agree | |18 |60% |
|Somewhat disagree | |2 |7% |
|Strongly disagree | |1 |3% |

Table 2 shows the frequency distribution on the answers to whether people believe that men are more likely to use illegal drugs at a younger age then women. 43% of respondents chose strongly agree and 57% of respondents chose somewhat agree accounting for 100% of respondents answers.

Table 2. Frequency distribution on agreement/disagreement on the statement “Men are more likely to use illegal drugs younger then women”.
|Strongly Agree | |13 |43% |
|Somewhat agree | |17 |57% |
|Somewhat disagree | |0 |0% |
|Strongly disagree | |0 |0% |

Table 3 shows the cross tabulation of answers to whether men use more illegal drugs then women split by gender. Between strongly agree and somewhat agree both males and females chose that as their answer making up a majority of the responses.

Table 3. Cross Tabulation of responses to whether males use more illegal drugs then women varied by gender.
|Men Use more | gender | | |
|illegal drugs then| | | |
|women | | | |
|Indicate response |Female |Male |Grand Total|
|Somewhat agree |6 |12 |18 |
|Somewhat disagree |1 |1 |2 |
|Strongly Agree |2 |7 |9 |
|Strongly disagree | |1 |1 |
|(blank) | | | |
|Grand Total |9 |21 |30 |

Table 4 shows the responses to whether males are more likely to use drugs younger then women varied by the education levels of the respondent. All respondents either chose strongly agree or somewhat agree. Otherwise the responses were very level based on education

Table 4. Cross tabulation of responses to whether men are more likely to use illegal drugs younger then women.

| | | | | | | | | |Men are more likely to use illegal drugs younger then women | identify yourself | | | | | | | | |Indicate Opinion |Associates degree or technical degree |Bachelor degree |Graduate degree |Highschool degree / GED |Less than highschool / secondary school |Some college credits but no degree | |Grand Total | |Somewhat agree |2 |6 | |3 |1 |5 | |17 | |Strongly Agree |4 |1 |1 |1 | |6 | |13 | |(blank) | | | | | | | | | |Grand Total |6 |7 |1 |4 |1 |11 | |30 | |

After conducting a social research survey, I was able to harness the opinions of a group of average people. My survey yielded responses from thirty respondents on a variety of questions in order to figure out who was taking the survey and how they thought on two key survey questions. My two questions were to either agree or disagree with the following statements: “Men are more likely to use illegal drugs than women” and Men are more likely to use drugs at a younger age then women”. The overall response of these two questions was revealed in my frequency distribution tables. Out of the thirty respondents mostly everyone agreed with the two statements, concluding that they believed men use more illegal drugs then women and start using them at a younger age. Responses could have been affected by age, gender, and education. Some answers did vary in response to these variables however most still agreed with the two statements. In my research on this topic I found out a few things. Men tend to use more illegal drugs then women; however evidence shows that this trend is beginning to shift. Men are more likely to use illegal drugs based on a variety of factors including, tendency to be reckless in behavior, alcohol use and the age that men begin drinking as well as marijuana use being relevant. When comparing the scholarly research to the survey responses it seemed that for the most part both the research and the survey were in fact in sync. The survey that I conducted was of a small sample size of thirty people. These thirty people consisted of my family, friends, and acquaintances. The purpose of conducting this survey was simply to get the opinions of a small sample of average people. This was done to compare the opinions of the respondents to the actual scholarly research and see if it matched up. The data that I collected was a non probability sample. To be prime research material, a randomly selected sample would have been ideal. This would be the best way to get the most UN biased results. There are certain limitations that can come from the survey. Questions that people might lie on or not familiar with might cause the responses to be invalid or unreliable. This can negatively affect the results of the survey and not help prove or negate research material. Based on both the research I conducted as well as my survey, the overall conclusion shows that there is a negative drug use among males. For multiple reasons males are falling more easily and faster in illegal drug use addiction. In the future, research maybe will be conducted to see and establish if genetics has anything to do with illegal drug use in addition to the social factors.

Rengert, G. F. (1996). The geography of illegal drugs (pp. 67-90). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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