Abstract
Drug use and drug control are theoretically — in terms of both social psychology and sociology — viewed as complementary components of a complex social and historical interaction process. Subsequently historical and other evidence is presented to substantiate the theoretical hypotheses. This lays the ground for the presentation and interpretation of the actual drug control system in Germany and the European Union. Again some theoretical hypotheses and their empirical grounding are presented concerning the logic of development trends. In the final part, the evolution of drug laws and their implementation are viewed. Recent developments can be regarded as taking place in stages based on certain changeable paradigms: the abstinence paradigm, the medicalization paradigm and the acceptance paradigm. For the time being there seems to be a slow transition from the first to the latter, implying that elements of all three are presently active in a diversity of policies and strategies, differing between states and regions of the German federal state and the European Union as well as between different levels of drug policy and drug care.
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