Compassionate Georgians

The FINANCIAL — In a country that believes itself troubled by drug abuse, Georgians are quite sympathetic and caring towards those with a dependence.

Overall, Georgians disagree with the statement “I would not want to live next door to someone who has been dependent on drugs,” and strongly disagree with the statement “people who become dependent on drugs are basically just bad people.”  Furthermore, most Georgians agree that “[they] have a responsibility to provide the best possible care for people with drug dependence.”

There are some groups of people who are less compassionate, and there are some subjects of which all Georgians remain suspicious.  Not surprisingly, when Georgians must choose between compassion for drug dependents and the safety of their children, they lean heavily toward their children: “most people who were once dependent on drugs can be trusted as babysitters” was met with very strong disagreement.  It’s worth noting that this desire to protect children is not perfectly irrational.  When read the statement, “parents would be foolish to let their children play in the park with the children of someone who has a history of drug dependence,” people disagreed with it just as strongly as with the previous statement.

Earlier this year (2012), Georgian Opinion Research Business International conducted the most recent wave of the Georgian Crime and Security Survey for the EU and the Georgian Ministry of Justice.  Respondents were asked a variety of questions about crime, safety, the police, and drug dependence.  Included was a series of statements to which respondents were asked to either strongly agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree and strongly disagree.  They were also given a neutral response (Neither agree nor disagree), but this was not included in our analysis.

In order to discuss this data more easily, we’ve created an index of sorts.  For each demographic presented, the percentage of people who disagree with a statement are subtracted from those who agree.  The resulting number represents a group’s agreement (if the number is positive) or disagreement (negative), and the consistency of the group’s position. 

Women and the Wealthy — We found significant relationships between drug dependence attitudes and both gender and social class.  There are some relationships to age, but they are not as consistent.  Among the most clear cut correlations in these data is one between sympathy and gender.  Women had more sympathetic reactions than men to 24 of the 25 statements we gave about recovering drug addicts.  The one statement to which women were less agreeable than men was accepting recovering drug dependents as babysitters.    This was also the largest difference between the sexes, a nearly 10 point difference in indices.  In contrast, the genders’ willingness to live near a recovering addict differed by only 3 points, which is within the margin of error.

We can also make statements about compassion’s relationship to social class.  Last week we discussed the differences between drug exposure in the working class and the upper middle class.  We showed that those in the upper middle class were much more likely to have interacted with a drug addict than those of lower class.  This greater exposure seems to have given the wealthy of Georgia a reason to be more sympathetic: for every statement discussed today, wealthy Georgians were more compassionate than the working class.  In fact, there is a good correlation here in that each successive step up the social ladder, the populations are more accepting.

The Old and the Young — While variation by age category is not as marked as by social class or gender, there are a few peaks and troughs worth noting.  For instance, there is a noticeable relationship to age and the belief that drug addicts are “basically just bad people.”  Those aged 61+ were far more likely to agree with the sentiment (scoring a -12) than the youngest respondents, who scored a -43.  The eldest were also more likely to agree that letting children play with the children of drug addicts is foolish: they received a score of -32, vice -55 for those aged 16-30. 

The remaining three statements selected for this article show no direct relationship to age, however.  Age seemed to not substantially affect the belief that providing care to drug addicts was a social responsibility.  Willingness to live next to a former drug addict varies by age, but not in any discernable pattern.  The least willing to neighbor drug addicts are the elderly, followed by the youth.  Those aged 41-60 are more willing, with those in their 20s and 30s the most. 

Allowing recovering drug addicts to act as babysitters is also an interesting case.  While the young are the least opposed to the idea, the elderly are not the most opposed. Those aged 21-40 disagreed more than the youngest by a full ten points.  Furthermore, middle aged folks were even more likely to disagree than that. 
This study was among the first household surveys conducted in Georgia to include opinion questions on drug dependence.  In the coming years, GORBI will be carrying out further studies on this and related topics to allow stakeholders in both Georgia and abroad to make well informed decisions about drug policy.
Studies of this kind have a margin of error of around 3% with a 95% confidence interval.  3000 Georgians were included in this poll.