Student Research Report: Criminal Severity Based on Drug Type and User
In Spring 2021, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here throughout the summer to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.
By Josh Weber
The recent increase in state legislation for legalization of marijuana in the United States would appear that people are understanding drug use differently. There was a time when severe drug laws were in place and any amount of drug would surely land you in jail. Today in 2021, marijuana is legal for recreational use in 16 states and in 36 for medical. It would then be appropriate to ask if any other drugs have received this same thought. Do people see other drugs like meth or MDMA as less severe and headed to legalization or decriminalization?
I conducted a study that could answer this question in college level students. Research was done by Businelle et al. (2007) that could also be used as a basis to answer this question in college students. It was a questionnaire that measured if MDMA had higher overall believed positives or negatives. The questionnaire asked what the effects of MDMA use were. Those who rated more positives where likely to use and condone MDMA use, and vice-versa. Students who didn’t condone and use MDMA noted more negatives of drug use. A student’s past drug use, or lack thereof, is an important consideration when looking at whether or not they perceive it as more or less severe. This was considered when administrating my study to students at Minnesota State University, Mankato. This directly would measure perceived severity of drug related crimes, specifically those with MDMA and Methamphetamine.
Do people really see one drug as better than the other? I gave out a survey to college students online to measure their opinions. This experiment was mainly done for my Psychology 211, Research Methods and Design class. They would see a scenario where the drug in question was either Meth or MDMA. There was also an added variable of the gender of the user in the scenario. It would also be important to see whether people were not looking at the drug used, but at the gender using it. This would eliminate or confirm other possible reasons for people viewing something as more or less severe. The measure of severity was simple, on a 1-5 scale. Five was least severe going up to 1 as most severe. Once all the data was collected over a short 3 days, with 49 responses, I looked at the data. Looking at the data revealed a surprising result. The participants did not view one drug as overall more or less severe than the other. My hypothesis suggested that people would at least view MDMA as less severe, but this was proven wrong. Alternatively, people also did not view one gender of user as more or less severe than the other.
It would appear people today have not changed their outlook on other drugs. They, on average, still see meth and MDMA on the same level of severity. This could still change if one day we see a federal law that legalizes and decriminalizes a once illicit drug like marijuana.
Anyone who is interested in the same topic could easily replicate this to look at any number of other drugs and variables. You could look at marijuana with MDMA, or two very dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine. You could change geographically as well. A test could be done in California, where drug laws are more lenient than others. The other test could be done in another state where state laws have not changed from federal. These could all be important to see where people stand as the world slowly changes.
References
Businelle, M. S., Kendzor, D. E., Rash, C. J., Patterson, S. M., & Copeland, A. L. (2009). The development and validation of the methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) beliefs questionnaire (MDMA-BQ) in college students. Addiction Research & Theory, 17(4), 432-445. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/10.1080/16066350801902442