Grant: Operating Grant

This project explores how moral values expressed and negotiated through social institutions such as the mass media shape health policy and practice. My focus is on the widespread concern about prescription painkillers that has come to preoccupy Canadian politicians, journalists, and drug control officials over the past ten years. The mounting anxiety surrounding these substances is particularly striking given a lack of clear evidence that misuse is actually on the rise (Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 2007). My objectives are as follows: to explore how painkiller misuse came to be understood as a major social problem and health concern; to examine how conflicting evidence about this concern is produced and negotiated by key stakeholders (e.g., politicians, providers of services to drug users, journalists, doctors, and drug users themselves); to situate debates among stakeholders within the context of rising prescription rates and the social norms that distinguish legitimate from illegitimate pain; and to analyze the consequences of moral judgements for clinical and public health policies and practices. How moral concerns about drugs unfold affects a range of outcomes, including how individual versus social responsibility is apportioned and whether therapeutic or criminal measures are pursued to manage the problem. It follows from this that the anxiety surrounding prescription painkillers has significant implications for the physical and mental health of individual Canadians and for the social health of the culture at large.