In Pomozal’s study it is espoused that “although a person’s decision to use or not to use various drugs may be influenced by external factors.” This leaves it as a mostly individual decision to use the drug. This leaves a question, what are the motives, and what is the person thinking as to what gain can he receive by using this drug? There are only really two possible answers to this question, the actual feeling of doing the drug is sufficient or there is a more broad and underlying reason, to show his rebellion against the Social Norm as Pomozal calls it. Pomozal (1977,220) says “the fact that the statement ‘Smoking marijuana would get me into trouble with the law’ was equally disbelieved and negatively valued by intenders and non-intenders is strong evidence that the law is relatively ineffective at influencing motivation to smoke marijuana”. Pomozal attempts to create a model of drug use by using his three main variables and he succeeds in creating a fairly high statistically significant model. This study is very effective and has very few weaknesses but more so strengths. It takes into account many factors and puts them in a clear order and discusses the three possibilities I detail and then applies them effectively. Kohn (1971,125) puts forth that “Zinberg reported that radical left-wing political preferences typified his sample of chronic marijuana users more” than his non-chronic and non-users. This further uses the idea that more rebellion oriented people will be more likely to ignore the law and do as they please. Kohn’s article revolves around the Authoritarianism-Rebellion Scale. He found that people that used drugs leaned more to the rebellion side of the spectrum while non-users typically were found on the authoritarian side of the scale. Also Kohn (1971,126) said in the article is “Blum reported that, in comparison to their non-using peers, stu...
