Where do moral panics come from? Some are bottom-up, but here is an example of a top-down origin, as described in "Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction" by Goode and Ben-Yehuda:
Howard Becker (1963: 135-46) argued that the passage of the marijuana laws, and the attendant media and public attention, was a product of the efforts of key moral entrepreneurs, specifically officials in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), who "perceived an area of wrongdoing that properly belonged in their jurisdiction and moved to put it there" (Becker 1963:138). The Bureau's thrust was made up of two prongs. First, FBN officials worked with state legislatures-including drafting model legislation-to facilitate the passage of the state anti-marijuana laws. And second, they provided "facts and figures" to the media which formed the basis for articles in national magazines. Thus, "through the press and other communications media," the Bureau sought to generate "a favorable public attitude toward the proposed" law (Becker 1963: 139). The "national menace" or threat posed by marijuana use did not have an objective reality. The FBN created a crisis where no basis for it existed,and the campaign created a "new class of outsiders-marihuana users."
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