Drug Use Causes Crime (Essay Sample)

Drug Use Causes Crime
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Introduction
A drug is any substance that, if ingested, affects how the body functions normally. Drugs have numerous ties to criminal activity. Using, possessing, producing, or distributing substances with abuse potential is a serious offense. Through user behavior changes and the rise of violence and other illegal activity associated with drug trafficking, drugs also contribute to the criminal underworld. This paper seeks to underscore that drug use leads to crime.
It is evident from studies that drug use causes crime. Individuals who use heroin and crack is about 320,000. About one-third of all acquisitive crimes are committed by heroin and crack users. As per Ramsay (2003), 73 percent of detained individuals were involved in illicit drug use the year before their imprisonment, with 57% utilizing the drugs within the last month. Close to half of those imprisoned used crack or heroin the previous year. When found out if they had utilized unlawful substances the earlier year, 80% of those set up for police headquarters contrasted with 11% of the general populace. Contrasted with the 1% rate in everybody, 32% of those captured had involved heroin somewhat recently. Moreover, this notion will be explained by various models, including systematic violence, psychopharmacological, and economic motivation models. This idea has its roots in early scholastic writings, which observed that drug usage destroys people's moral fiber and lets out their inner criminal.
Psychopharmacological Model
The psychopharmacological paradigm integrates psychological and pharmacological explanations for the correlation between substance use and criminal behavior. Intoxicants immediately impact neurological and physical functions that lead to behavioral shifts, which can be utilized to clarify the drug-crime relationship from a merely pharmacological conceptual standpoint, bypassing any intermediate psychological mechanisms (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019). In contrast, a solely psychological justification clarifies post-ingestion behavioral alterations by appealing to personality traits, psychological predisposition to aggression, and other conditions that are believed to be directly associated with aggressive and criminal behavior.
From a strictly psychological standpoint, one may assume that a person who turns violent or criminal after consuming an intoxicant was already inclined to act in such a manner before the absorption of the chemical (White and Gorman, 2000). Therefore, the intoxicated condition might be seen as an expression of these tendencies, or the alterations in behavior can be seen as signs of a deeper dynamic inside the individual's nature. The psychological and pharmacological clarifications, taken by themselves, are both insufficient and potentially misleading (Seddon, 2000). According to the psychopharmacological theory, a person's character and emotional state are altered by the intoxicant, which may explain why the person becomes more aggressive and commits more crimes after using the intoxicant (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019).
According to the psychopharmacological concept, intoxication can cause a person to act in manners inconsistent with their typical behavior when sober through disinterest, poor decision-making, cognitive-perceptual mistakes, neurochemical alterations, and deficits in attention (White and Gorman, 2000). Lenience to the drug, the existence of several psychoactive components (relations impacts), cultural approvals of consumption, hormonal dissimilarities, usage past, history of bolstering for criminal and aggressive behavior, gender, age, prospects related to use, and biological or genetic predisposition are all aspects that influence how a drug affects the user.
There is a continuum from an acute to a chronic intoxicated condition. The psychopharmacological model best explains the behavioral alterations linked to acute intoxication, which occurs shortly after drug administration (Seddon, 2000). It is hypothesized, nevertheless, that the subsequent consequences of long-term drug use—such as lack of sleep, withdrawal consequences, dietary deficiencies, limitations in neuropsychological performance, or the improvement of pathological personality disorders—lead to aggressive and criminal behavior (White and Gorman, 2000). Because heroin is a depressant on the central nervous system, psychopharmacological brutality is uncommon while under the influence of the drug (Bennett et al., 2008). However, after intoxication wears off and the user experiences; a need for drugs and withdrawal symptoms, aggressiveness and criminal conduct is more probable.
The psychopharmacological concept has become widely accepted in the scientific community. It has helped legitimize restriction and the "fight on drugs" in the legislative arena (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019). Restriction and the "fight on drugs" are based on the premise that illicit substances' "mind-altering" nature causes the user to engage in morally questionable and antisocial behavior. Restriction and the "fight on drugs" are based on the premise that illicit substances' "mind-altering" nature causes the user to engage in morally questionable and antisocial behavior. Researchers found that drug addicts committed 25 percent of all US crimes (White and Gorman, 2000). Heroin's "maddening" effects caused this high number.
After consuming a gateway drug, if someone liked and accepted it, they would move on to stronger illicit substances. A person with an aversion to a substance may try harder drugs to get the same high. Marijuana use is commonly considered a "gateway" to more dangerous substances like heroin, which may kill. Heroin's reputation as being so addictive that even a single dose can make a user dependent adds to the fear caused by its potency (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019). While there is little evidence to support this stereotype, the public outcry it inspires is a potent political instrument for shaping laws and regulations surrounding drug usage.
Although there is strong empirical proof linking drinking alcohol and aggressive behavior, the processes through which alcohol is hypothesized to provoke aggressiveness for certain but not all drinkers remain unclear (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019). Acute alcohol use is hypothesized to have intermittent psychopharmacological impacts, producing unpleasant sedative sensations and stimulating euphoric experiences. Moderate alcohol consumption and intoxication are linked to a stimulant-like euphoric phase in which one commonly experiences subjective feelings such as increased self-confidence, relaxation, decreased inhibition, and insensibility. Alcohol abuse may produce headaches, nausea, temporary unconsciousness, and coma. Drinking has been linked to violence by several models (Soleimani and Esfahani, 2019). Three models are related to the link between drug usage and crime: the indirect causal paradigm, the expectancy model, and the disinhibition model.
The link between alcohol and crime is evident in several datasets. In 53 percent of violent events recorded by the 2013/14 CSEW, victims believed the offender(s) were intoxicated. The percentage of violent occurrences classified as "alcohol-related" has remained largely constant over the past decade, despite declining overall incident numbers. Sixty-four percent of reported violence between strangers was thought to be alcohol-related (CSEW 2013/14). Seventy percent of weekend violence and 70% of evening/nighttime violence in the combined 2012/13 and 2013/14 CSEW datasets were connected to alcohol use. As the day went towards nighttime, more violent occurrences were found to be alcohol-related. Alcohol contributed to 70% of all incidences of public violence. In cases of alcohol-fueled violence, victims were more likely to sustain injuries, including cuts and concussions.
Economic Motivation Model
The economic incentive model proposes that because of the cost of illicit substances, drug users can infrequently support their use through normal methods. Consequently, they must commit criminal actions to earn money to sustain their drug addiction. The causal link between drug abuse and financial hardship, which motivates criminal activity, is at the heart of the economic motivation paradigm (White and Gorman, 2000). Addicts may have good sources of income, but many of them have minimal amounts of authentic income; thus, its consumers do not engage in delinquencies because their dependency on drugs weighs against consistent employment; they engage in felonious activities since other means for sustaining their substantial drug routine are unattainable for individuals with little preparation, skill, or on-the-job competency.
Although there are many ways to earn money illegally, experts have shown that selling and distributing drugs inside the economy is the most popular. This line of reasonableness is consistent with the rational choice theory since the person knows that engaging in the drug trade with another person's consent is substantially safer than engaging in other criminal activities designed to generate cash (Seddon, 2000). From this vantage point, participation in acquisitive offenses would only be required when an individual's earnings from drug sales are insufficient to cover their drug intake and other personal demands. Robbery, burglary, prostitution, and theft of drugs or money to buy drugs are likely the most common acquisitive crimes. Previous study findings show that minority members are more probable to be consumers and to be arrested than non-minority members, and many substance users were hooked to...