ABSTRACT
The act of injecting heroin into a vein is not inherently deviant. If a nurse gives a patient drugs under a doctor’s orders, it is perfectly proper. It is when it is done in a way that is not publicly defined as proper that it becomes deviant. The act’s deviant character lies in the way it is defined in the public mind. H.S.Becker (1971, p. 341). This is a large turn away from older sociology which tended to rest heavily upon the idea that deviance leads to social control. I have come to believe that the reverse idea, i.e., social control leads to deviance, is equally tenable and the potentially richer premise for studying deviance in modern society. E.M. Lemert (1967, p. v).
