Paper Assignment 1 (Prompt) Soc 363: Drug & Alcohol Use Paper 1: Representations of Drugs This assignment asks you to think critically about representations of drugs and drug use by analyzing drug claims made by the media and reflecting on your own initial ideas about drugs. Assignment: This paper entails two parts. For the first part (Part 1) , you will present an analysis of claims made by the media concerning the effects of specific drugs between the 1930s and the 2000s. For the second part (Part 2), you will revisit the drug representation you shared during the first week of class to see whether your image of drugs has changed. Part 1: Throughout chapter 5, Goode highlights several cases in which the media presented erroneous claims regarding the effects of specific drugs. These cases or “drug stories” have included portrayals of marijuana in the 1930s, LSD in the 1960s, PCP in the 1970s, crack in the 1980s, and methamphetamines in the 1990s-2000s. In this part of the paper, you will analyze the factually incorrect claims made by the media in two of the aforementioned cases. After identifying the erroneous claims involved in each case, make sure to respond to the following questions in your analysis of each case: Why were these claims made? How were these claims corrected? Have these claims died down now that the factual record has been set straight regarding these drugs? Note: To better understand chapter five, I uploaded the text ebook pdf format “Drugs In American Society.” The original page number is 134-166. On the bottom, the page number is 245. Chapter five is “Drugs In The Media.” Part 2: Knowing what you now know about drug use and harm–and the media’s depiction of drug use and scares–revisit the drug representation you shared on Padlet during the first week of class. After reflecting on your image and reviewing the reasons behind your choice, has anything changed? Would you post the same representation today? If not, why not? If yes, would you hold the same reasons or might they be different?
