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Substance use and abuse are two of the most frequent psychological problems clinicians encounter. Mainstream approaches focus on the biological and psychological factors supporting drug abuse. But to fully comprehend the issue, clinicians need to consider the social, historical, and cultural factors responsible for drug-related problems.   Substance Use and Abuse: Cultural and Historical Perspectives provides an inclusive explanation of the human desire to take drugs. Using a multidisciplinary framework, authors Russil Durrant and Jo Thakker explore the cultural and historical variables that contribute to drug use. Integrating biological, psychosocial, and cultural-historical perspectives, this innovative and accessible volume addresses the fundamental question of why drug use is such a ubiquitous feature of human society.

In our attempts to understand crime, researchers typically focus on proximate factors such as the psychology of offenders, their developmental history, and the social structure in which they are embedded.While these factors are important, they don't tell the whole story.

Tobacco control advocates now recognize the value of influencing news coverage of tobacco; news coverage influences attitudes and behavior as well as policy progression. It is, however, difficult to assess the progress of such efforts within a single national and temporal context. Our data represent the first systematic international comparison of press coverage of tobacco issues. Tobacco articles from major daily newspapers in Australia (12 newspapers; 1,188 articles) and the United States (30 newspapers; 1,317 articles) were collected over 1 year (2001). The analysis shows that coverage in the two countries was similarly apportioned between hard news (>70%) and opinion pieces. Similarly, stories in both countries were most likely to recount positive events. The substantive focus of coverage, however, differed, as did the expression of hostile opinion toward tobacco control efforts (United States, 4%; Australia, 7.1%). Although secondhand smoke and education, cessation, and prevention efforts were covered widely in both settings, these topics dominated coverage in Australia (29.2%) more than in the United States (17.6%), where a more diffuse set of tobacco topics gained relative prominence. The difference in policy conditions seems to offer contrasting opportunities for advocates in the two countries to use newspapers to promote helpful tobacco control messages for both behavior and policy change.

The harm that drugs cause to users and society is the typical rationale for the regulation of illicit drugs and the punishment of drug offenders. However, what factors actually influence people's punishment responses to drug offenses? A sample of 196 residents of Wellington, New Zealand completed measures that assessed their perceptions of the social threat caused by drugs, the harm of drugs, their feelings of emotional warmth towards drug offenders, and their perceptions of the moral wrongfulness of drug offenses. They then assigned punishment to different drug offenses. Perceptions of moral wrongfulness was the best predictor of punishment responses across offense types, although perceptions of individual harm and social threat also independently predicted punishment to, respectively, cannabis-use offenses and cannabis-sale offenses. The results of this study suggest that the amount of punishment deemed appropriate for different drug offenses is most strongly influenced by individuals' perceptions of the moral wrongfulness of drug offending.

The harm that drugs cause to users and society is the typical rationale for the regulation of illicit drugs and the punishment of drug offenders. However, what factors actually influence people's punishment responses to drug offenses? A sample of 196 residents of Wellington, New Zealand completed measures that assessed their perceptions of the social threat caused by drugs, the harm of drugs, their feelings of emotional warmth towards drug offenders, and their perceptions of the moral wrongfulness of drug offenses. They then assigned punishment to different drug offenses. Perceptions of moral wrongfulness was the best predictor of punishment responses across offense types, although perceptions of individual harm and social threat also independently predicted punishment to, respectively, cannabis-use offenses and cannabis-sale offenses. The results of this study suggest that the amount of punishment deemed appropriate for different drug offenses is most strongly influenced by individuals' perceptions of the moral wrongfulness of drug offending.

Andrews et al. effectively argue that, despite prominent criticism, adaptationism can be a viable research strategy. We agree. In our complementary commentary, we discuss the neglected method of inference to the best explanation and argue that it is a valuable addition to the adaptationist's methodological practice.

It is generally recognized that there are a number of relatively distinct evolutionary approaches to understanding human behavior, including evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, and cultural evolutionary theory. We begin with a comparative review of these three approaches, outlining their key features and points of difference. We then turn to a discussion of some of the standard criticisms of these approaches. We argue that although many of these criticisms are misguided and reflect a superficial reading of the relevant literature, there are a number of more substantive issues that have yet to be fully resolved. In the final section on “evolutionary behavioral science” we indicate how this might be achieved. This framework will subsequently inform our analyses throughout the remainder of this book.

In this chapter, we discuss how an evolutionary approach to understanding crime can inform the practice of rehabilitation. We summarize the evolutionary behavioral science model developed earlier in the book and draw out five major general implications of this perspective for offender rehabilitation. To make this discussion more concrete we take the example of empathy and altruism and demonstrate how formulating these concepts in ways consistent with a gene–culture coevolution model can provide useful practice directions.

In this chapter, we address Tinbergen's third level of explanation: ontogeny or development. We first outline the key explanatory targets for developmental criminology. We highlight here the importance of explaining the overall shape of the age–crime curve, individual differences in the rate and prevalence of offending, and the factors that lead to desistance from crime. We then turn to a review of criminological explanations for these key explanatory targets, highlighting the most prominent developmental theories or models of offending. We then consider how an evolutionary approach can contribute to our existing theoretical understanding of the developmental processes underlying criminal behavior. Drawing from life history theory we argue that a better understanding of the patterns of offending that are found can be obtained by considering both our species-specific life history trajectory and how individual differences may reflect alternate life history strategies in response to different environmental contexts.