Drugs and Young PeopleUnderstanding Criminology

3rd March 2009

Lecture Outline

• Researching • Prevalence and Trends• Influences, Explanations and Debates• Drugs-Crime Links • Responses and Interventions

Researching Drug Usage (1)

• Police Reports– Heavily dependent on

policing / customs investigation and recording practice

– Increase in warning for cannabis use

• Drug-Testing of Offenders– Atypical

Change in Drugs Offences 2006/07 -> 2007/08

Police Data +18%BCS Self-report (16-24 year olds)

-3.3%

Reults of Police "On Charge" Drug TestingPilot projects in 9 areas 2001-2003

Opiates, 24

Cocaine, 12

Opiates and Cocaine, 18

Negative, 47

Researching Drug Usage (2)

• Self-report declarations– Accuracy– Honesty– Willingness to

declare

Young People’s Self-declared useJ Hoare and J Flatley (2008) Drug Misuse Declared: Findings from the 2007/08 BCS

Changing Use? 1998 -2007/8(last year usage)

Increase Decrease Stable

Cocaine Any DrugHallucinogensOpiatesCannabisFrequent Use

Any Class ACrackEcstasyHeroin

Gender and Ethnicity:Use of any drug: Ever, Last year, Last month

Lifestyle CorrelatesBehaviour Effect

Any Drug

Cannabis Ecstasy

Visiting Nightclub 4+ times a month (v. never)

X 2 X 2 X 3.5

Going to Pub 9 + times a month (v. never)

X 4 X 3.9 x 6.7

Drank alcohol 3+ times a week (v. never in year)

x8 X8.4 X 13.7

Drugs "Stickiness": %age of "Ever Used" who have used in past month

Source: BCS 2007/08 Self- Reports 16-24

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Anabo

lic st

eroids

Magic

mushro

oms

Glues

Halluc

inoge

ns LSD

Opiates

Heroin

Tranqu

illiser

s

Ampheta

mines

Ketamine

Amyl Nitri

te

Ecstas

y

Methad

one

Crack

coca

ine

Cocain

e pow

der

Any co

caine

Canna

bis

Global Drugs Trade• Hugely profitably criminal activity: annual turnover est. at £7-8 billion

• Huge prince inflation from production to street price

•Heroin: 168 fold - Cocaine:159 fold

• Evidence of ‘specialism’ of heroin and cocaine traders

Influences, Explanations and Debates

• Why do people take drugs?– Addiction

• Mainstream and medical• Quite specific medical meaning: a much more loosely

defined social use• Underplays choice, context and the vast majority of drug use

– Peer Pressure• More social• Peer subcultures can offer support for drug use; status;

values supportive of drug-use• Underplays choice: many teen experimenters are strong

individualists – Pharmopsycholgical effects (pleasure!)

• Links between choice of drug and particular social trends?– Consumer Culture

• Links to an increasingly diverse consumer culture

• Problematic Drug Use– Typical?– Addiction– Purity– Social context, rather than drug use

• Gateway Theories– Experience of some drugs leading on to others– Some analytical problems – Reasons?

• Psychological; social; empirical?

Influences, Explanations and Debates

The Normalisation ThesisSee Howard Parker et al (1998) Illegal Leisure

• A growth in the use of drugs by young people• Deviant acts -> mainstream leisure• A weakening of the correlations between drug

use and gender, ethnicity, social class• A central part of youth culture• The policing of drugs requires the

identification of ‘problem’ drug users

Counter Arguments• Ignores impacts of drug use• Research approach: ‘naturalism’• Counter evidence• Short-term fluctuations

– Drug use esp. adolescent use now in decline• Failure to adequately consider different types of drug use

– Experimentation v. problematic use, and relation between them– Dominance of certain drugs (cannabis, ecstasy)

• A conflation of cultural prevalence and use• An exaggeration of cultural change

Drug-Crime Links• Correlation is not

causation!– There is strong evidence

that those who commit (other) crime also use drugs

• Self-report studies – Possible ‘willingness to

admit’ bias?• Police and Prison Testing

– Skewed samples

– Causal Direction• Crime -> Drugs OR• Drugs -> Crime

Trevor Bennet and Katy Holloway (2004) ‘Drug use and offending: summary results of the first two years of the NEW-ADAM programme’ Home Office,

Plausible Drug-crime Links

• Drug Use -> crime• Crime -> Drug use• 3rd Factor causes both• Drug Use makes you a worse criminal: easy to

catch

The Drugs / Acquisitive Crime Link(Hough, M et al (2001) Drugs and Crime: What are the Links?, Drugscope)

• Economic Necessity (Drug Use Crime)• Facilitating Crime (Crime Drug Use)

– Crime provides the money, contacts for drug use, or a lifestyle that produces a need for drugs

• A complex combination of the above two• Both Drug Use and Crime are caused by a

common factor e.g. social exclusionNot incompatible with each otherAll drug use or problematic drug use?

The Drugs / Violence Link

• Paul Goldstein, (1985)• Psycho-pharmacological Model: drugs make

people more violent• Economic Compulsion: acquisitive violent

crime to feed habit• Violent and Drugs Subculture overlap

Arguments for Legalisation / Decriminalisation

• Economic– Enforcement of drugs laws is immensely costly, and unsuccessful– Legalisation would provide a source of taxation

• Social– drug laws are counter-productive: do not decrease drug use, and

increases social exclusion• Harm reduction

– Legalisation would allow regulation of trade, purity etc.– Imprisonment is a highly inappropriate response

• Criminological– Legalisation would cut the drugs / crime link– Organised crime would be deprived of its major source of funds

Drugs (Re-)Classification

?

Jan 2009

•Harm? Criminal Justice Response? Prevention?

•Political Expediency?