Lecture 9: Drugs and Crime Flashcards
What is it Illegal to do regarding drugs in the UK?
- Be in possession of an illicit substance
–> Under the MOD Act, not the NPS Act - Supply illicit substances
–> Including giving them away for free - Produce illicit substances
- Import and export illicit substances
What did Nutt et al (2010) find when analysing the harm of drugs?
- Robust analysis of drug harms
–> Physical: Morality, damage
–> Psychological: Addition, impairment
–> Social: Relationship breakdown, crime
How are drugs classified in the UK?
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
- Advisory council on the Misue of Drugs (AMCD)
- New Psychoactive substances Act 2016
- Cannabis
2004: Moved from class B to class C
2009: Moved from C to Class B
What are the Trends regarding drug misuse in the UK?
What are the stats surrounding Cannabis?
Since estimates began in the year ending December 1995:
- cannabis has consistently been the most used drug in the England and Wales
- In the latest year, 7.6% of adults ages 16 to 59 years and 15.4% of adults aged 16-24 reported having used the drug in the last year
- there was no change for those aged 16-59 years when compared with the year ending March 2020, but levels were 18% lower from those aged 16 to 24 years
What are the User Characteristics?
- drug use in the last year amongst those aged 16-24 was 17.6%. For those aged 25-59 it was 7.7%
- there fall in drug use from March 2020 for those aged 16-24 was only seen in men and is mainly due to the decrease in cannabis use
- In contrast from March 2020 there was increased use in those age 30-34 and 45-54
- Single people are more likely to have used a drug in the last year compared to people who are married or in a civil partnership
- Those earning less than 10,400 per year were more likely to use a drug in the last year (13.7%) than those with higher incomes
- those who lists nightclubs more frequently and more likely to have used a drug in the last year
–> Links to normalisation theory
What did the North-West longitudinal study involve?
- Parker, Aldridge and Measham (1998)
–> 700 individuals aged 14 in 1991
–> Followed over a period of 5 years
–> five annual self report surveys were undertaken with the full sample
–> Eight-six interviews conducted when respondents turned 17
Asked about
- personal and family cirumcstances
- disposable income
- leisure time
- drug and alcohol use
attitudes towards substance use
What were North-west Longitudinal findings?
- Cannabis was the drug most likely to be the first illicit drug that young people tried
- At year 5, over half of the sample had taken a drug in the previous month
- No significant gender difference
- social class differences disappear as young people progress through adolescence
- Mix of positive and negative experiences with different drugs were explored
- Those who did not use drugs talked about drugs still being a strong part of their social lives
What are the four pathways surrounding drug use?
- Abstainers
- former triers
- in transition
- current user
What is the Drug Normalisation theory?
- Drug use no longer an activity carried out by deviant or subcultural groups
- Drugs are more widely available for young people
- The prevalence of drug trying before the age of 18 is increasing
- compared to previous decades, a greater proportion of young people are regular drug users
- even ‘abstainers’ are frequently around drugs
- Young drug users are open-minded about continuing to use drugs into adult hood
- drug use is largely recreational and focuses less on addictive drugs
- recreational drug use has become more socially acceptable among young people
- authors have argued that social strictures have become destabilised so young people focus more on subjective feelings of pleasure
What is the critique of the Normalisation theory?
Measham and Shiner (2009)
- Dismissing social structure is incorrect. Structures may not look the same as before but they are still there and young people are still influenced by them. It just looks a bit different
- Focus is on recreational use but what about more problematic use?
- Too much emphasis is placed on rationality choice
- The theory was used by prohibitionist to argue for a more punitive approach to policing drug use but this hadn’t been the authors intention
What is multiple Exclusion Homelessness?
Fitzpatrick et al (2011): there is a high degree of intersection between different domains of social exclusion
- Homelessness
- substance misuse
- Having been in institutional care (eg. prison)
- Engaging in street culture activities (eg. begging)
- Those who experience all of these issues are the most socially excluded- social exclusion is cumulative
What are the trends in relation to injecting drug use and homelessness?
Fortier et al (2020)- Canadian study
- Unstably-housed people who inject drugs are more likely to use stimulants, inject in public and borrow injecting equipment fro others compared to their stably0housed counterparts
- People who inject drugs with improving housing conditions are more likely to decrease and less likely to increase injecting frequency over time than those with declining housing
- Implications for blood-borne viruses: people in unstable housing are at higher risk of contracting a blood-borne virus since they are more likely to share drug equipment
Is there a causality between drugs and crime?
- Drug use and crime are both caused by a third variable eg. poverty
–> Drug use and crime are correlated but proving causality is extremely difficult and perhaps not necessarily helpful
What Is Goldstien’s Tripartite framework?
- Developed in the context of homicides in New York, during 1970s and 1980s when there was a crack epidemic and high levels of violence
- Goldstein claimed that the three models in the framework should be thought of as ‘ideal types’ or as ‘hypothetically concrete’
