Summary
Contents
How do we understand drug use? How are drugs related to our social worlds? How should drug use be understood, approached and dealt with? Insightful and illuminating, this book successfully discusses drugs in social contexts. In an elegant manner, the authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. Powerful and engaging, this book discusses main questions within the field of psychoactive drugs research, such as: Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their individual involvement in drug use? This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as students and drug service practitioners in social work, social policy and nursing.
Drugs and Crime
Drugs and Crime
The relationship between drugs and crime is a complex and disputed one, yet it is a cornerstone of drug policy in many countries. Four key types of drugs-crime relationship have been identified: that drugs cause crime, crime causes drugs, that a third variable causes both, and a bi-directional or reciprocal model. In terms of explaining why drugs cause crime, Goldstein's influential ‘tripartite’ framework proposed three explanations: psychopharmacology, economic compulsion and systemic.
A key focus for politicians, the media and the general public in relation to the ‘problem’ of drugs is the perceived relationship between drugs and crime. The view is widely held that controlled drugs are pharmacologically dangerous and can lead both directly to violent crime and indirectly to acquisitive ...
