[Social ecology of the drug problem]

The intrinsic dynamics of addiction problems which--as it can be seen at the current Ecstacy epidemy--are growing, requires a more precise analytical consideration of macro social risk factors. In this case, different action programs of the society and also of the different youth subcultures have to be considered ("maximize": performance, consumption, fun etc.). A conclusive unimodal interpretation of these programs in our pluralistic society hardly helps to understand these phenomena. It is even so, that each of these subprograms represents a multiple risk factor for consumption of stimulants for increasing the performance as tranquilizers can be used to identify leisure time. Also social geographical factors should be considered at such analyses and of course economic aspects are of central interest. The complexity of analytical problems at the social sciences resulted in a reduction of interest during the last years. The boundary between journalistic texts and scientific texts devoted to social analysis of addiction is indistinct. Therefore, it seems to be reasonable, to turn down the level of sociological consideration of the drug problem onto the regional level: City-related rates of prevalence of consumption of illegal drugs are very helpful for understanding social risk factors of drug consumption. A pilot analysis of this issue is presented here.