Situating agency within structure: the influence of autonomy and opportunity structure on drug users' routes of administration
Date
2011
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Current drug treatment services largely neglect the importance of how people administer drugs as a central component of the drug-using process. With the exception of intravenous drug use, which has been studied primarily in terms of the risk it poses for blood-borne disease transmission, research on routes of drug administration is virtually absent from the extensive literature on drug use, abuse, and treatment in the United States. This study examines the relationship between individual autonomy and the availability of opportunities to use drugs on drug users' preferred route of administration. This project uses secondary data from the Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Studies (DATOS) to investigate factors that influence which route of administration -- inhalation, smoking, or injecting -- is preferred by cocaine and heroin users.