Control, Peer Association, and Permissive Attitudes to Drug Use: An Integrated Model Explaining Illicit Drug Use in China

Since 2014, synthetic drugs have replaced opioids to become the most popular illicit drugs in China. Objectives: To explain illicit drug use in contemporary China, this research develops an integrative theoretical model including control theories, differential association theory, and normalization theory. Methods: The study draws on the first-hand data collected from 716 drug users in four compulsory drug detoxification institutions in China. Results: Low self-control increases drug use frequency through the heightened association with drug-use friends and more permissive attitudes to drug use simultaneously. However, family attachment indirectly influences drug use frequency via more permissive attitudes to drug use but not drug-use friends. Conclusion &contribution: The results show that the influence of self-control and family attachment is fully mediated by drug-use friends and permissive attitudes to drug use. This study provides a detailed picture of the mechanism of how self- and social control influence drug use frequency and contributes to the larger body of scholarship integrating criminological theories to understand drug use behaviors in China. The implications of the findings for scientific and effective drug treatment programs are also discussed.

COVID-19 Outbreak and Physical Activity in the Italian Population: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Underlying Psychosocial Mechanisms

Italy is one of the first European epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic. In attempts to hinder the spread of the novel coronavirus disease, Italian government hardened protective measures, from quarantine to lockdown, impacting millions of lives dramatically. Amongst the enacted restrictions, all non-essential activities were prohibited as well as all outdoor activities banned. However, at the first spur of the outbreak, for about a dozen of days, physical and sports activities were permitted, while maintaining social distancing. In this timeframe, by administering measures coming from self-determination theory and theory of planned behavior and anxiety state, in an integrated approach, we investigated the prevalence of these activities by testing, via a Structural Equation Model, the influence of such psychosocial variables on the intention to preserve physical fitness during the healthcare emergency. Through an adequate fit of the hypothesized model and a multi-group analysis, we compared the most COVID-19 hit Italian region - Lombardy - to the rest of Italy, finding that anxiety was significantly higher in the Lombardy region than the rest of the country. In addition, anxiety negatively influenced the intention to do physical activity. Giving the potential deleterious effects of physical inactivity due to personal restrictions, these data may increase preparedness of public health measures and attractiveness of recommendations, including on the beneficial effects of exercise, under circumstances of social distancing to control an outbreak of a novel infectious disease.