Drugs and Crime

Drug Abuse and Crime

• The drug scene includes:

• Manufacturers, importers, primary distributors, smugglers, dealers, corrupt criminal justice officials, and users who endanger other people’s lives through negligence

• The drug problem is further complicated because of the many substances abused, their varying effects on the mind and body, and the kinds of dependencies users develop.

• Everything form marijuana to meth and paint thinner to heroine
• DEA Drug Schedules

• There are two connections between Drugs and Crime:

• 1) Drugs themselves are illegal and therefore the possession or use is a crime
• 2) Drugs may lead to some commit other criminal acts to support their drug addiction

• 17% of state prisoners and 18% of federal inmates said they committed their current offense to obtain money for drugs
• 32% of state prisoners and 26% of federal inmates said they committed their current offense while under the influence of drugs
• 5% of homicides are drug related (probably and underestimate)

The History of Drug Abuse

• The use of chemical substances that alter physiological and psychological functioning dates back to the Old Stone Age.

• Egyptian relics from 3500 B.C. depict the use of opium in religious rituals

• By 1600 B.C., an Egyptian work listed opium as a painkiller

• The Incas of South America are known to have used cocaine at least 5,000 years ago
• Cannabis, the hemp plant from which marijuana and hashish are derived, also has a 5,000 year history

• Since antiquity, people have cultivated a variety of drugs for religious, medicinal, and social purposes.
• The modern era of drug abuse in the United States began with the use of drugs for medicinal purposes

• By the nineteenth century, the two components of opium were identified and given the names “morphine” and “codeine.”
• Ignorant of the addictive properties of these drugs, physicians used them to treat a wide variety of human illnesses.
• So popular that they found their way into almost all patent medicines for pain relief.

• During the Civil War, the use of injectable morphine to ease the pain of battle casualties was so extensive that morphine addiction among veterans came to be known as the “soldier’s disease”
• Then, in 1898, the Bayer Company in Germany introduced a new opiate, supposedly a nonaddictive substitute for morphine and codeine

• It came out under the trade name Heroin; it proved to be even more addictive than morphine

• When cocaine, which was isolated from the coca leaf in 1860, appeared on the national drug scene, it, too, was used for medicinal purposes

• Its use to unblock the sinuses initiated the “snorting” of cocaine into the nostrils
• Its popularity spread, and soon it was used in other products

• Peruvian Wine of Coca; variety of tonics, and the most famous of all, Coca-Cola, which was made with coca until 1903.

• Federal authorities estimated that there were 200,000 addicts in the early 1900s

• Growing concern over the increase in addition led in 1914 to the passage of the Harrison Act, designed to regulate the domestic use, sale, and transfer of opium and coca products.

• Though this legislation decreased the number of addicts, it was a double edged sword

• It was not until 1930s that the abuse of marijuana began to arouse public concern

Congress persuaded by Henry Anslinger, responded with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which placed a prohibitive tax of $100 an ounce on the drug