Around the U.S., overdose rates have spiked, much of this being propelled by the introduction of illicit fentanyl — which is up to 100 times more potent than morphine — into the nation’s drug supply. Fentanyl quickly has become the bogeyman that "bath salts" were a decade ago and that marijuana was some 80 years ago, with many puzzled at the frequency in which it is used and implicated in deaths.
In the 1950s, sociologist Howard Becker conducted a series of interviews with marijuana users, seeking to unpack the panic around the drug and those who used it. Becker’s work in this space has become an important way of understanding a basic, but still perplexing, question among substance use researchers like us: Why do people use drugs, particularly when the potential negative consequences can be so deep and well-known?
