Drinking has become an increasing problem in our society. Many people now see drinking as a norm. Lisa McIntyre, author of The Practical Skeptic states that, For one thing, we know that norms vary across societies (152). So we also know that what is considered to be deviant varies across societies. How could members of our society see drinking as anything but a norm when everywhere one turns alcohol is being advertised? Whether it be on billboards, busses, in magazine ads, or television commercials, alcohol is everywhere and it seems as though everyone is drinking it. Gone are the times of prohibition, when alcohol was seen as evil.After doing quantitative research on drinking, including a literature review and studying survey data, we came to the conclusion that drinking is a serious problem in the United States. While both of us prefer not to drink, many of our peers do not share our same attitude. In fact, it appears as if drinking is now a measure of social acceptance among teenagers and college students. Looking at the subject of drinking from a conflict theorist point-of-view helped us to understand the issue. We discovered that every social class drinks, regardless of age, income, race, or sex. We wanted to see the effects of drinking in our society and which groups of people were more likely to participate in such activities. However, when we began to search for variables of drinking, we were discouraged to find that none existed in our provided databases. To call a concept a variable means, in the first place, that it is a thing of interest in a particular piece of research (McIntyre 50). While we were interested in using a variable of drinking in our research, the lack of one made us assume that many members of society do not view alcohol as a serious problem, or are in denial of its effects. Because of this, we had to use a variable of drug use, that being whether marijuana should be made legal or not, assum...
