ABSTRACT
From its first use, the concept of moral panic has been especially valuable as a model for explaining punitive or disciplinary adult reactions both to the people and social forces alleged to put children and youth at risk and, paradoxically perhaps, to the social dangers that young people and youth cultures are themselves thought to pose. Tellingly, sociologist Jock Young coined the phrase in The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use (1971), his inquiry into the causes of the unwarranted concern over illicit drug use, including young people’s use of marijuana, that he found among British news media and police. A pathbreaking study of deviance amplification (a term introduced by criminologist Leslie Wilkins in 1967, referring to the escalation of deviance through social labeling), Young’s book shows that media condemnation of drug taking not only led to more arrests, but also resulted in a greater sense of community and shared identity among drug users, who increasingly felt alienated from the mainstream.
