title: Legal sanctions and information about drugs as influences upon the decision by adolescents whether to use illicit drugs.
abstract: Although those Malaysian secondary schoolchildren who have never used drugs are consistent in their support for legal and social sanctions against drug use, it is argued that such sanctions are a relatively unimportant factor in the decision whether or not to use drugs. Non-drug users inhabit a social world separated from their drug-using contemporaries; they rely on information from public rather than direct social sources, and claim to have been little interested in information received. However, there is evidence that, for a minority of the drug-using sub-sample, public information campaigns have made them more rather than less interested in experimenting with drug substances.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services; D008296:Malaysia; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence