Drugs and Young People
Understanding 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
Change in Drugs Offences
2006/07 -> 2007/08
Police Data
+18%
BCS Self-report
-3.3%
(16-24 year olds)
Reults of Police "On Charge" Drug Testing
Pilot projects in 9 areas 2001-2003
Opiates and
Cocaine, 18
Cocaine, 12
– Atypical
Opiates, 24
Negative, 47
Researching Drug Usage (2)
• Self-report
declarations
– Accuracy
– Honesty
– Willingness to
declare
Young People’s Self-declared use
J 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 Drug
Hallucinogens
Opiates
Cannabis
Frequent Use
Any Class A
Crack
Ecstasy
Heroin
Gender and Ethnicity:
Use of any drug: Ever, Last year, Last month
Lifestyle Correlates
Behaviour
Effect
Any
Drug
Visiting Nightclub 4+ times a
X2
month (v. never)
Going to Pub 9 + times a
X4
month (v. never)
Drank alcohol 3+ times a week x8
(v. never in year)
Cannabis
Ecstasy
X2
X 3.5
X 3.9
x 6.7
X8.4
X 13.7
m
er
o
O
s
s
es
LS
D
ge
ns
lu
e
pi
at
in
o
G
m
id
s
hr
oo
st
us
lic
H
al
lu
c
ag
ic
bo
H
Tr
er
an
o
qu i n
illi
Am
se
ph
rs
et
am
in
Ke es
ta
m
in
Am
e
yl
N
itr
ite
Ec
st
as
M
y
et
ha
C
do
ra
ne
ck
co
C
oc
ca
ai
in
ne
e
po
An wde
y
r
co
ca
in
e
C
an
na
bi
s
M
An
a
Drugs "Stickiness":
%age of "Ever Used" who have used in past month
Source: BCS 2007/08 Self- Reports 16-24
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
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
Influences, Explanations and Debates
• 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?
The Normalisation Thesis
See 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 exclusion
Not incompatible with each other
All 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?