The relationship between level of education and moral judgment toward who abuse drugs

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to verify the differences of the moral judgment toward the people who abuse drugs according to the schooling of the participants. This is the Brazilian part of a multicentric study. N=180 individuals in a community in Brasília, DF, Brazil; following consent, descriptive data were collected by anonymous interviewer-administered questionnaire that included socio-demographic, educational level and the history of drug use. Participants were predominantly females, middle-aged, married, employed, religious, with high school education; higher schooling considered alcohol abusers, marijuana, cocaine and crack are important as anyone else; the majority with lower education level knew someone who used drugs, but no association was found regarding drug use and schooling; in the unadjusted logistic regression model, positive associations were found between higher schooling and ‘who use drugs are as important as anyone else’ for all drugs studied; after adjusted, the association remained only for marijuana (all p<0.05). The negative attitude surrounding drugs issue can be an important obstacle. The results suggest that education can help to reduce the stigma associated; public policies would be important to minimizing social harm caused by stigmatized visions of drug users.