Substance abuse is marginalized both as an activity and as an area of study. Substance abuse research is a relatively new field, and in the early days faculty members engaging in such research found it difficult to obtain tenure track positions at universities. Funding for substance abuse study was limited, depending mainly on the National Institute on Drug Abuse for grants. This article describes one professor's role in the institutionalization of substance abuse research in academia and the benefits of a career in this field.
The relationship between drug use and criminal behavior has been of primary interest to researchers and practitioners for most of this century. As such, it is the purpose of this article to examine the historical underpinnings of current perceptions and to suggest an organizational paradigm for interpreting current drugs-crime literature. An overview of the literature and issues suggests that there is strong empirical evidence of the statistical overlap between drug using and criminal behavior. Further, drug use is seen as increasing and sustaining criminal behavior. However, a wide body of research suggests that drug use and crime have a complex recursive nature to their relationship, and that drug use, in spite of a long history of public perceptions, cannot be viewed as a direct and simple cause of crime. A review of subcultural, role, and ecological theory suggests that drug use and crime may emerge from the same etiological variables and become an integral part of a street-drug-using lifestyle and subculture. Radical theory argues that the drugs/crime relationship is created by social policy that makes drugs illegal. It is argued that this perspective fails to recognize the complexity of the drugs/crime relationship. The existing research suggests the need for increasing treatment availability and increasing economic opportunities within the framework of a careful review of drug policy and enforcement.
It is the purpose of this paper to examine the major research issues in the study of the relationship between crime and drugs and to examine the relevant research literature as it applies to those issues. Typologies are constructed for both criminal and drug using behavior and it is argued that the relationship between crime and drugs should be examined for each type of crime and each type of drug. A variety of issues regarding the nature of the relationship are discussed. These issues include the statistical association, causal priority, heroin use and increased, sustained and type of criminal activity, the direction of the causal effect and the ecology of crime and drugs. Finally, it is argued that a longitudinal design is necessary before the complexities of the nature of the crime-drug relationship can begin to be unraveled.
AbstractThe purpose of this article was to examine the ecological perspective as an explanation of criminal and drug‐using behavior and to present data from a pilot study on the areal distribution of crime and drugs. We found that individuals engaged in narcotics use, those engaged in criminal behavior, and those engaged in both resided in the same area of the community. Those who used other types of drugs were less likely to reside in the same areas as those engaged in criminal behavior. Thus, we concluded narcotics users and criminals were drawn from the same population and both behaviors may be produced by the same environmental variables, rather than have an individual causal relationship.
