PSYC 3403 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Substance Abuse, Genetic Predisposition, United States Sentencing Commission

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3403
• Professor: John Weekes

Document Summary

Part 1: just theories: evoluion atomic structure gravity addicion. Not necessarily a theoreical perspecive varies from society to society. Beliefs or judgments about: right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. Imply that drug users are bad or sinful people. Substance abuse is a crime: has heavily inluenced us drug policy. Bad people who should be punished no real focus on treaing, intervening, helping. People involved in drugs are bad this is being judgemental of other right and wrong. Moral model criicism: ofers no real help to the person, no developed theoreical perspecive. Puniive not very humanisic : more of a just deserts philosophy, no evidence that punishment reduces or eliminates problemaic use. Biological or physiologically-based abnormality that causes them to become addicted: geneic predisposiion, inherited vulnerability or geneic factors. Recent research from mcgill university has found that a geneic mutaion in cholinergic neurons in the reward centre nucleus accumbens makes humans very suscepible to addicion.