Impact of Drug Abuse on Performance of Gymnasium Students in Germany

The education stakeholders in Germany acknowledge that alcohol and drug abuse among students are significant barriers to achieving academic goals. Alcohol and drug abuse are also related to an increase in other risky actions such as early sexual conduct, drunk driving, physical violence and truancy. Drug abuse in schools, particularly illicit drugs in high school, has long been a topic of concern. Thus, the study sought to examine the impact of drug abuse on the performance of college students in Germany. The study was literature-based and the inferences were based on the verdicts from the prior studies. The study results showed that drug abuse has a negative impact on performance. Drugs and alcohol are some of the most detrimental yet most common disruptions in teenage brain development. They manipulate the brain's wiring and affect how it processes and retains information, including how a teen thinks, focuses, learns, remembers, and concentrates inside and outside school. Drugs can impair teens' cognitive development and affect students' performance in school: reduce their ability to memorize things, poor concentration in the classroom and deficiency of prioritization of assignments. The study recommended that secondary school administrators develop a well-integrated learner surveillance system throughout school environments. Moreover, the government introduce life skills training in the syllabus to teach learners how to resist indulgence in drug abuse. Schools need to develop policies that promote participation in learning by creating environments that make it satisfying and interesting. In addition, the school administration should introduce and strengthen counselling and support services to students who demand social assistance. Keywords: Drug Abuse, Performance, Students, Germany

Situational Peer Dynamics and Crime Decisions

Objectives To investigate how peer dynamics, specifically interpersonal conversations between a potential offender and a peer, contemporaneous with a crime opportunity, influence perceptions of sanction certainty and social costs. Methods Data are analyzed from randomized experiments and hypothetical vignettes embedded within a nationwide, online survey ( n = 1,275). Vignettes were presented for three distinct crime opportunities, drunk driving, fighting, and insurance fraud. Results The findings suggest that respondents adjust two core decision-making perceptions—the perceived certainty of being legally sanctioned and perceived social costs such as stigma or embarrassment—in accord with the content of verbal communications from peers. There is evidence for this both between and within subjects. Conclusions The study underscores the importance of accounting for both physical and social features of the situational context for crime in models of offender decision making. Implications are drawn regarding the social milieu for offender decision making, and the broader criminological relevance of choice principles.

Business Against Drunk Driving: The Neoliberal State, Labatt Brewery, and the Creation of the “Responsible Drinker”

This paper examines the motivations and consequences of Labatt’s anti–drinking and driving campaign. The paper considers the economic and political conditions that enabled Canada’s largest brewer to execute a cause-advertising campaign and to establish itself as a “responsible corporation”—even when its leadership cared less about the deleterious effects of Labatt products and more about the company’s earnings. It examines neoliberal governance and the relationship between the public and private sector in tackling a prominent social problem—impaired driving—and how a for-profit business used its influence to create a new subjectivity: the “responsible drinker,” who did not drive while under the influence. It seeks to situate Labatt’s campaign within an increasingly neoliberal, individualistic political economy. This paper argues that Labatt’s actions were part of the neoliberal agenda toward “responsibilization” that shifted the responsibility for drunk driving away from regime-based institutions and onto the individual, allowing the neoliberal state to govern from a distance. It demonstrates that contrary to neoliberal rhetoric the state did not shrink during the late twentieth century but rather took on new regulatory functions.

Criminalization of drunk driving: problems of legislative practice

The article highlights the Ukrainian experience of criminalization of drunk driving as a result of amendments to criminal and administrative legislation in 2018–2021. The importance of systematization and validity in making changes to administrative and criminal law is noted. Attention is drawn to the need for careful observance of the rules of legal technique in legislative activity, given that the use of administrative and criminal law is associated with the most significant restrictions on human rights and freedoms. It is noted that there are violations of the rules of legal technique, allowed in the relevant laws in terms of the provisions on criminalization and decriminalization of drunk driving: violations of the homogeneity of legal regulation (Law № 720-IX regulated an issue that was not the subject of its regulation); internal consistency (Law № 720-IX on amendments “in connection with the adoption of Law № 2617-VIII” amended the Law itself № 2617-VIII); external consistency (provisions of Law № 720-IX contradict the provisions of Article 2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and Article 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); linguistic (in paragraph 117 of the Law № 720-IX there is a morphological error); procedural (violated the requirements of Articles 90, 92 of the Regulations). Attention is drawn to the content of the conclusions and the legal significance of the explanations of the Parliamentary Committee on Law Enforcement, adopted on the criminalization of drunk driving. It is noted that the relevant committee violated the regulatory procedures and provisions of the legislation on parliamentary committees. The consequences of the relevant technical and legal violations (legislative uncertainty) are highlighted and ways to eliminate these problems are suggested.

Technical and legislative deficiencies regarding the contravention liability for drunk driving

The serious state of affairs in the field of road safety determines the firm intervention of the state in order to prevent and combat effectively, in particular, the acts of drunk driving, which has proven to be one of the main causes of road accidents. In this context, the state established liability for this type of deviant behavior, criminalizing in article 233 of the Contraventional Code of the Republic of Moldova the acts of driving a vehicle in a state of alcohol with a minimum degree or handing over the vehicle to a person who is in a state of drunkenness. An in-depth analysis of the structure and content of Article 233 of the Contravention Code allowed us to form the opinion that the author of the legal norm was poorly inspired, admitted several errors and technical-legislative deficiencies, neglected the basic requirements that must comply with the normative acts. This caused misinterpretation and misapplication of the law.

Usefulness of the AUDIT tool in assessing alcohol consumption patterns of drivers who have lost their driving license

Alcohol consumption by drivers has a negative impact on the driving behaviour and the risk of an accident. The objective of the work the usefulness of the AUDIT tool in relation to alcohol consumption patterns of people who lost their driving license for drunk driving. The study used a 10-item AUDIT questionnaire, which included 196 people aged 19 to 71 years. The experimental group (Group 1) consisted of people who lost their driving license "after drinking", and the control group (Group 2) consisted of people who drive motor vehicles at work. It has been shown that the majority of people who had their authorization to drive a car revoked, faced difficulties in controlling their alcohol consumption. There were no statistically significant differences in the results of the AUDIT questionnaire, taking into account the group and gender criteria. The surveyed drivers most often revealed a low and moderate pattern of alcohol consumption. People who drink, in the problem model (risky) significantly more often lost their driving license than people in the control group.

Deterring the Drunk Driver: An Examination of Conditional Deterrence and Self-Reported Drunk Driving

This project uses a representative U.S. population sample and Generalized Structural Equation Modeling (GSEM) to explore the deterrence of driving under the influence (DUI) and it’s moderation by the differential deterrability of problem and non-problem drinkers. As hypothesized, the results indicate that personal and vicarious experiences with punishment and punishment avoidance were significant predictors of punishment certainty and self-reported DUI. Significant heterogeneity in both the formulation of perceived certainty of punishment and the relationship between this perception and DUI also exists between problem and non-problem drinkers. Most notably, certainty of punishment was a more robust negative predictor of DUI offending for problem drinkers, and prior punishment appears to have little effect on perceptions of punishment certainty for problem drinkers.