The study is attentive to factors in the social context in which the sentencing occurs. Changes in the social context of the drug problem were determined by examining public opinion surveys, analyzing drug-related editorials, reviewing the literature on Federal drug policy, and analyzing changes in Federal antidrug laws and the events leading up to these changes. A detailed statistical analysis of the patterns and determinants of drug sentences was conducted during three periods: 1963-68, 1969-73, and 1974-76. Legal, extra-legal, and criminal justice process variables were considered. The findings led to three main conclusions: first, symbolic justice considerations are often involved in sentencing decisions, with the pattern of influence of many variables reflecting prevalent definitions of deviance; second, using a structural-contextual approach contributes to a better understanding of sentencing and may help to reconcile contradictory findings of previous research; third, selectivity bias may be a serious problem of sentencing studies, such that sentencing researchers must develop measures of severity that are theoretically meaningful and avoid such bias. The appendixes present a list of significant social and political events during the study period, schedules of controlled substances under the provisions of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, and tables showing the logistic regression of type of sentence on variables. Tabular data and about 160 references are provided.