hem. They also have a need to fit in with them and they will do anything to gain that acceptance. Along with Differential Association comes Differential Reinforcement. Reinforcement is what a teenager would get from his peers. Lets say the teen starts doing drugs like the rest of his friends, and they start praising him for doing it. The teen will want to continue doing it so that he continues getting praised. The next theory that can cause deviance or drug abuse among teens is known as labeling theory. This is when a teenager gets labeled as being a drug abuser, and then they continue to use drugs because everyone around them treats them the way the label says they are. The teenager will view them treating them this way and start to think that they must be that way, and conform to it. This is known as Thomas Theorem. Pretty soon the label will takeover there life, and everything they do will be because the label says that that is how they must act. Giving them a master status to follow. Merton has another explanation of why teens get involved in drugs. He calls them innovators. Innovators accept the goals of being successful but try to get them through disapproved means. The goal in this situation is that a teen wants to be happy. And if a teenager is a part of a broken home, or is depressed they may look to drugs thinking that if they use them they will become happy. Which could explain why some teens get involved. Some teenagers have also been oppressed by society, an have no choice but to be involved with drugs. How this works is that the economy system is setup so that some folks will never have very high paying jobs. And if this happens it effects the children's parents, giving them less chance to make a lot of money. and if the parents aren't making very much money they have to get more jobs to support there family. So if the parents are never home to be with there children, then the child's inner containment goes down and thus t...
