The Social Construction Of Drug Scares: The Social Construction Of Drug Scare

The chapter, “The Social Construction of Drug Scares,” was a great example used in order to explain why the Holocaust happened. The drug scares are intended to notify the public on how bad a drug is and why to avoid it. According to Reinarman (1995), drug scares are comprised of seven ingredients: a kernel of truth, media magnification, politico-moral entrepreneurs, professional interest groups, historical context of conflict, linking the drug use to a dangerous class, and scapegoating a drug for a wide array of public problems (163-165). The three major parts that played into the “drug scare” for the holocaust are media magnification and scapegoating a drug for a wide array of public problems. Media magnification was a major part of the

During the holocaust the drug was the Jewish population. In the video it talks about the Nazi newspapers and how it persuaded people to follow in his ways. Part of the media was the false advertisements that were created. Manders (2016), stated that the commercials that were showed of the concentration camps made the camps were fun and almost destination like. They showed the Jews laughing, paying games, and even eating in a cafeteria. Although this is the opposite of what the media magnification is for, it was giving the impression to both the Germans and the Jews that what was happening was ok. On the other hand, there was propaganda that was used to show how awful the Jews were. There are two books that children often read, "The Poisonous Mushroom by Ernst Heimer (1938), and "Trust No Fox on his Green Health and No Jew on his Oath" by Elvira Bauer (1936). Both of the books were used in several school to teach children how to pick out what a Jew looks like and the actions of the

Scapegoating a drug for a wide array of public problems states that it, "provides elites with fig leaves to place over unsightly social ills that are endemic to the social system over which they preside. And they provide the public with a restricted aperture of attribution in which only a chemical boogeyman or the lone deviants who ingest it are seen as the cause of a complex cornucopia of complex problems" (Reinarman 2016). While the problems of Germany began with their own poor decisions during WWI, Hitler found it possible to blame these failures on the Jews. He did this by making it known that Jews were to be considered racially inferior (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and YouTube 2013). The video The Path to Nazi Genocide states that, "Anti-Semitism reinforced hostility or indifference towards treatment," of the Jews (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and YouTube 2013). Unfortunately Jews were used as the scapegoat in order for Hitler to try and solve all of Germany’s