Examining Privileged Drug Use: An Analysis of Congressional Hearings on Ecstasy

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

The present study uses a qualitative content analysis to examine U.S. Congressional hearings about the illicit drug, ecstasy. The study aims to assess how legislators rhetorically construct ecstasy users. Through deductive and inductive qualitative coding, the analysis will seek to understand whether lawmakers construct ecstasy users as less criminally culpable and as more vulnerable than other kinds of drug users. Within that, the findings will demonstrate if ecstasy users are identified as White and middle or upper class. This study builds on Peterson’s (1985) comparative analysis of a two-track legislative approach to drug crime – in which young, upper class White drug users were constructed as victims in need of protection from criminal poor Black and Latino drug traffickers, who warranted harsh punishment. The present study builds on this scholarship that has documented how race-and class-based constructions of different kinds of drug users propel different kinds of drug regulation.

Author

• Sofia Laguna, University of California, Irvine