The impact of culture on acceptance of soft drugs across Europe

PurposeThis paper applies Welzel and Inglehart's new human development/modernization theory to explain variation of tolerance in soft drug taking. It hypothesizes that tolerance of illegal drugs is linked to the human development and strength of a general cultural axis of nations: survivalism vs. self-expressionism.MethodsData are from the fourth wave of the World Values Surveys and from the United Nations’ Human Development Report 2001. Using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Regression (HGLM), this study examines variation of tolerance in soft drugs in 30 European nations with 38,719 respondents.ResultsResults support the hypothesis that residents from nations with higher levels of human development and with higher self-expressionist scores are more tolerant of soft drug use than residents in nations with lower human development levels and lower self-expressionist scores.ConclusionsOur findings point to the troublesome relationship between cosmopolitan culture characteristic of liberal democracy and soft drug tolerance. As liberal democracy empowers ordinary people with civil and political rights, it also nurtures the growth of human freedom, making it evident in the mass liberty aspiration of self-expressionism and self-management.

► Culture as measured by self-expressionism is used to explain variation of drug tolerance.
► Using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Regression (HGLM), our hypothesis is supported.
► European nations with higher scores of self-expressionism are more tolerant of soft drugs.
► In light of the findings, the current approaches to the drug control are discussed.