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Introduction
According to (Bewley-Taylor, D. 2005, 171-79) 11% of shoplifting, burglary, vehicle crimes are drug related. BBC report informed that illegal drug rose in 2004.when looking at class A group in 2004/2005 we see a different pattern where 20 to 24 years old people reported high level of drug use then 16 to 19 years old. The reported use for class (A) drugs was the highest at 9.8% in 2004/2005. (Bewley-Taylor, D. 2005, 171-79) In 1998 the percentage was high among young people, this is because may be due to depressions and burdens of failed life’s take 20 to 24 years old people into drug and on the other hand there have done a lot for drug young people to keep them away from drugs in these years.
The same view is elaborated by Barton in the following words, “At one level, there is an obvious link between illicit drugs and crime—any action that contravenes the parameters of the law regarding drugs becomes criminal. Thus, for example, drug dealing, importation and possession are all crimes, making the link between drugs and crime obvious. However, there are other links, far more complex and requiring a much deeper analysis; links that have taxed academics for at least the last thirty years.” (Barton, 2003, 96)
Endorsing the same fact Newburn and Elliott also ratifies the opinion quoted by Barton in his book, “Illicit Drugs: Use and Control”. According to them, “There have been a number of contemporary attempts to ‘think through’ the relationship between drugs and crime, and almost without exception the results have been strewn with ambiguity and littered with caveats. For instance, Newburn and Elliott (1999:6) are unequivocal in stating that ‘it is undeniably the case that crime and drugs are linked’.” (Barton, 2003, 96)
Aims and Objectives
There is always a debate on normalisation of illicit drug use. According to home office figures and other resources we see that the percentage of drug use is quiet high in Britain but it does not mean that drug use is acceptable. (Sargent, 1992, 92) People who get involved in class (A) drugs need medical and psychological help. (Plant, 1994, 54) The kind of treatment they need will depend on whether or not they are well-motivated in stop taking drugs.
According to drug inventions programmes statistics ,in 2005/6,the proportion reporting that they have ever taken any drug has fallen by 16%; the proportion reporting that they have ever taken Class A drugs has fallen by 18%; the proportion reporting the use of any drug in the past year has fallen by 21%; the proportion reporting the use of class A drugs in the past year is stable; and the proportion reporting the use of cannabis in the past year has fallen by 24% Use of any drug had decreased: 19% of pupils had taken drugs in 2005, compared to 21% in 2003. Cannabis use had decreased: 12% of pupils had used cannabis in 2005, down from 13% in 2003, 2002 and 2001.
Government is working on many project stop overcome with this issue. The social exclusion unit introduced in 1997 is also working to discourage drugs. During recent years, television, newspaper and poster campaigns have been mounted and a number of educational aids such as films, audiotapes, booklets have been produced. Many health education activities have been directed as specific target groups such as school children.
Many people argue that illicit drug taking is often inspired by rebelliousness and health education may be ineffective in relation to illicit drug use but health education plays an important part.it highlights important issues and awareness of the important of drug problems as a matter for public concern and public policy. (Gossop, 2000, 159) Overall it is clear that drug use is not a normal problem, it is a serious social problem. Drugs is an escape for most of the people, they need help, it is important for the parents to know their children. Government is also emphasising on good parenting now.
The local community agencies are primarily aimed at the Police but it may be useful to local partnerships who want to know how to tackle drug problems. This includes information on the latest developments, research findings and approaches to tackling the drug supply. There are tools for identifying problems, developing responses and monitoring progress, as well as highlighting practical measures to make communities safer. (Coomber, 1994, 80)
The factors contributing to drug misuse are complex and youngsters who use drug always have more then a one reason for doing so. They differ from each other in this message, these reasons also make it clear that normal people don’t use drugs, Drug use is a vast social problem, which cannot only be solved by families or parents. (Robertson, 1997, 37) Changes must be made to improve the quality of human life in our communities and in our society on the whole. There is a plenty of scope for further research to identify which people especially will experience drug problems and the situations.
Drugs are related to crime in many ways both direct and indirectly. Drugs are often described as one of the main causes that lead a person to commit crime. This is often due to the effects they have on the user’s behaviour and by generating violence and other illegal activities. Offences committed due to being intoxicated or as a consequence of intoxication can include any type of crime, although there are some specific offences such as driving under the influence of drugs. (Fazey, 2002, 100)
Another main reason is the need for the abuser to feed his addiction, which may also result in criminal behaviour. Dependent users of heroin, crack, amphetamines and other drugs need to finance their addiction, and few have the means to do so easily or legally. Offenders themselves often say they committed their crime to feed their habit, even going so far as to imply that, were they not drug users, they would not be offenders. (Bean, 2002, 113)
Often when an addict is unable to feed his/her addiction they will often turn to petty crime such as burglary and mugging as a means to funding the habit. The Home Office states that crimes committed to fund drug use commonly include shoplifting, credit card fraud, handling stolen goods, vehicle crime, burglary and prostitution, and, less commonly, street robbery, theft and violent crime. It is estimated that up to 70% of acquisitive crime, particularly burglary, theft from vehicles and shoplifting, is drug related. This shows the clear link between drug abuse and crime.
Drug dependence is a problem in its own right because it serves to perpetuate drug use and the problems associated with it. In fact, dependent users are commonly defined as problem drug users and it is widely believed that such users are the main sources of the common problem behaviours associated with drug misuse, such as health problems and crime. (Bennett, 2004, 133)
Aspects of Drug and Its Related Crime Control
Drug abuse does not solely have a negative impact on petty crime throughout a society. It has other implications including squatting in abandoned buildings, assault, child and spouse abuse, suicide, and even murder. Early detection and corrective action can help prevent the spread of drug related crime. Left unchecked, drug abusers can take over public places such as parks and street corners. This can lead to a negative atmosphere throughout a community and create fear throughout societies.
Government research also suggests that:
- Half of all recorded crime has been estimated to relate to drug use in some way
- Around three quarters of crack and heroin users say they are committing crime so they can buy drugs
- 75% of persistent criminal offenders have used drugs
- Heroin and/or cocaine users who have been arrested have committed almost ten times as many offences as non-users who have been arrested.
Unfortunately, it has become an authenticated fact that drug mafia has acquired a strong role in determining the economic stability and destabilisation. The underworld mafia is involved even in forming and falling of governments in third world countries. This is the most shocking perspective of this heinous business. Barton affirms in this respect, “The cultivation and production of drugs have become an important and sometimes integral part of many countries’ economic development.
Ruggerio and South (1995:3) endorse this perspective and claim that illicit drugs should be seen ‘simply as commodities’. If this approach is adopted, and there seem to be few good reasons why it should not be, there is a need to examine the nature of market-based relationships that surround drug users. The logical corollary of this is that the market mechanism, including the laws of supply and demand, holds the potential to control the illicit drug market.” (Barton, 2003, 79)
Regarding the legitimacy of drugs, Barton is of the view that “There is a need to undertake a market-based review of the illicit drug milieu in order to ascertain the ways illicit drug markets resemble legitimate markets, and the ways in which they vary. In order to achieve this there are a number of requirements to be fulfilled. First and foremost there is the need to understand the value of illicit drugs in relation to other commodities. Then there is the need for an excursion into economics and economic theory in order to understand the market mechanism and the nature of markets.” (Barton, 2003, 79)
There are certain perspectives that must be addressed and considered while controlling drug abuse and crime, Barton suggests in this respect that “Nevertheless, and recognizing the limitations inherent in those perspectives, there remains the fact that, for some at least, adolescence is a period characterized by experimentation and discovery, in any number of aspects of life. Equally, the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginnings of the twenty-first has seen a visible expression of this period of experimentation, which is often contained in particular, and time-specific youth cultures. Plant (1994:55) links this to the subject matter of our text by claiming that the visibility of youth culture has bred worry and, especially that ‘The use of psychoactive drugs…by adolescents has become firmly established as a major area of concern.’” (Barton, 2003, 115)
Drug addiction has close relation with certain fatal diseases. Most of the drugs users become habitual to get their dose orally or through syringes and this habit causes them fall a victim to hepatitis or HIV. “In Britain, the relationship between intravenous drug use and HIV infection has featured uppermost in health concerns about drug use. Such concerns found origin in the heroin epidemic of the 1980s, when the spread of HIV was largely attributed to the use of shared drug injecting paraphernalia among injecting drug users.” (Gossop, 2000, 160) This shows the severity of the situation prevailed in UK due to drug abuse.
As the police do not record which crimes are drug-related, we do not know exactly how big a problem drug-related offending is. However, there is undoubtedly a strong association between drug use and crime. (De Hann, 1997, 355-66)
Law Enforcement
International drug trafficking is defined by international treaties and the domestic laws that implement these treaties. Before the Hague Convention of 1912, trafficking in illicit drugs did not exist. There were, of course, prohibitions against the use, and hence the trafficking, of certain drugs in various countries, but there were no international agreements binding on all countries. Which drugs were or were not illegal was dependent on individual states or countries.
The first drug to attract international attention was opium, where international concern dates back to the nineteenth century. The UK fought two opium wars with China to ensure the continuation of the opium trade because China would only accept silver in return for the tea, porcelain, and other goods traded with the UK. With the UK running out of silver, it grew opium in India for sale in China. Other countries, notably the U.S. (which was also trading in opium produced in Turkey) wanted a means of breaking control of the trade.
This concern also coincided with the moral distaste experienced by Bishop Brent when he discovered the opium dens in the Philippines, which had been liberated from Spain and occupied by the U.S. The pressure that Brent was able to exert on the U.S. administration through his friendship with Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft meant that there was both a moral as well as commercial reason for controlling the trade. (Musto, 1999, 121)
With moral pressure against the trade in the UK, an international commission met in Shangai in 1908 chaired by Bishop Brent. Under American pressure, the 13 countries present supported another conference in the Hague, with Brent in the chair again, leading to the Hague Convention of 1912, which put opium and cocaine trading under international control (Bruun, Pan, & Rexed, 1975, 13), though it was not until the Convention was added to the Versailles Treaty of 1918 that ended the First World War that it was ratified and came into force.
Interestingly, Italian and American attempts to control cannabis (Indian hemp) through the Hague Convention proved unsuccessful, but the drug was added to the Geneva Convention of 1924, after El Guindy, the Egyptian representative, argued that 70% of people in insane asylums were smokers of hashish–figures provided by a British doctor, Warnock, working in Cairo. “El Guindy … manipulated the Geneva meeting so that cannabis found itself on the lists of dangerous substances that were subjected to the international laws of the International Opium Convention” (Mills, 2003, p. 177).
One factor was that two years previously the UK had handed over power to the Egyptians after ruling it for 40 years. Hemp was an important business for Britain and India. It was used for rope making (still important in shipping), paper making, and textiles and was integral to the Indian economy. A compromise restricted control to medical and scientific use of flowering and fruiting tops of cannabis plants, so that the stalks and leaves could still be used for other purposes.
None of this meant—or means today–that the United Nations and the League before it had any power to enforce any of these conventions. The tools remain persuasion and, sometimes, naming and shaming nations to fulfil their international obligations under the treaties. In the extreme, individual nations may put pressure on certain states to adhere to the conventions, but this is at the level of one country to another and does not involve the United Nations. (United Nations 2007 Report)
Prevention
The Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War entrusted the League of Nations with “the general supervision over agreements with regard to the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs” (Bruun, Pan, & Rexed, 1975, p. 13). At the first meeting of the League, an Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs was established, but with membership comprising countries involved in opium production and trade, controls were not rigorously enforced. So in 1929 the Permanent Central Narcotics Board (PCNB) was created, followed by the Drug Supervisory Body (DSB) in response to a new Convention in 1931. Drug trafficking increased, but the diversion of drugs from licit supplies did decrease.
The Paris Pact (2003) is a consultative mechanism for a group of countries concerned with the illicit drug routes from Central Asia to Europe, which in reality means the Afghanistan opium problem and the trafficking routes to Europe. It was the outcome of a ministerial conference in Paris in 2003 that suggested a concerted strategic approach to heroin trafficking from Afghanistan. UNODC has taken the lead in carrying forward this initiative, organizing four expert roundtables to identify action priorities for better border control, anti-trafficking measures, and new forms of regional and international cooperation and to recommend new action to the Policy Consultative Group.
The roundtables were on the trafficking of Afghan opiates, drug trafficking in the Balkan Region (2003), drug trafficking through the Islamic Republic of Iran (2003), and trafficking through Central Asia, CIS countries, and the Russian Federation (2004).
The Paris statement called upon UNODC to take the lead and ensure that actions taken by the UNODC, the European Union, and OSCE should reinforce one another and to ensure that projects are not duplicated. It said that a clearinghouse mechanism should be reactivated for all assistance projects. To this end UNODC set up ADAM, the Automated Donor Assistance Mechanism, so that agencies and countries can connect, cooperate, and coordinate their projects.
This was followed up in 2006 with a ministerial meeting in Moscow where the UNODC’s efforts to set up the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre (CARICC) were strongly supported. The Centre will be located in Almaty, Kazakhstan where it was hoped that a building would be handed over for this purpose by the end of 2006. There have been many hold-ups, both political and financial, but it is hoped to be operational by the end of 2007.
Money laundering is the other side of the trafficking coin. As with precursor control, many different groups have become involved in trying to counter money laundering, which in the electronic age has come far. The days when cases of cash were taken to offshore banks are probably gone, and banking in the developed world has been forced to become more transparent, but even more ingenious means are being developed by criminals and terrorists.
FATF produced 40 recommendations against money laundering in 1990 and updated them in 2003. CICAD set up an Anti-Money Laundering Unit in 1999, has an Expert Group on Money Laundering Control, and has produced model regulations on money laundering and offences related to drug trafficking and other criminal offences. They regularly provide training for judges and prosecutors, law enforcement officials, bankers and regulators (CICAD, 2006).
Treatment
Precursors are those chemicals which are necessary for the processing of raw materials into illicit drugs (such as acetic anhydride and hydrochloric acid for heroin processing) or those chemicals which form the basis for the laboratory creation of illicit drugs (such as pseudepedrine and ephedrine for amphetamine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy). There are many organizations involved in this enterprise. One of the biggest problems facing those wishing to control these precursor drugs and stop them from being used to manufacture illicit drugs is that they are extensively used in the legitimate manufacture of a wide variety of products.
Alcohol plays a significant role in many people’s lives. It is often associated with celebration, socialising or just relaxing. The vast majority of people in the UK consume alcohol responsibly, without causing any harm to themselves or others. Unfortunately alcohol can also be associated with crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. You don’t have to drink to experience the harm that can be associated with alcohol. Common assaults, road accidents, property damage and excessive noise can all seriously affect the lives of individuals and the community.
It is alcohol rather more than illegal drugs that tends to be linked to aggression and violent crime, and hence, potentially, to crime with longer-term effects for victims and society. (Ruggerio, V. and South, N. 1995, p3).
Conclusion
Drug abuse and crime are connected in many ways. It is repeatedly highlighted that drug users are more likely than nonusers to commit crimes; therefore it is possible to state that drugs can generate violence. Assessing the nature and extent of the influence of drugs on crime requires that reliable information about the offence and the offender is available. This is not always the case and in the face of problematic evidence, it is impossible to say how much drugs actually influence the occurrence of crime.
Drug use and criminal behaviour certainly seem to be correlated. While the argument that drugs cause crime generally involves an explicit statement to the effect that drug addicts are driven to commit crimes to finance their habits, the fact is that not all drug users are addicts. Indeed, there is a large population of regular drug users who are not addicted. This can be related to the large numbers of people that drink alcohol, but are not necessarily addicted to it.
References
Barton, Adrian: 2003: Illicit Drugs: Use and Control. Routledge. New York: 79-96 & 115.
Bean, Phillip: Drugs and Crime. 2002, (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 112-14.
Bennett, T. K. Holloway (2004) Understanding Drugs, Alcohol and Crime Open University Press. 131-36.
Bewley-Taylor, D. 2005 Challenging the UN drug control conventions: Problems and possibilities. The International Journal of Drug Policy, 14(2), 171-179.
Bruun, K., Pan, L., & Rexed, I. 1975 The gentlemen’s club. London: The University of Chicago Press. p.13.
CICAD 2006: Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) 2006 CICAD history. Web.
Coomber, R., (1994) Drugs and Drug Use In Society, London, Greenwich University Press Ltd. 78-82.
De Hann, Willem. (1997). “Abolitionism and crime control” In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and R. Reiner (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, (pp 355-366). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Fazey, C.S.J 2002: Estimating the world illicit drug situation — Reality and the seven deadly political sins. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 9(1), 95-103.
Gossop, M., (2000) Living with drugs, London, M.P.G books Ltd. 156-63.
Mills, J.H. 2003 Cannabis Britannia: Empire, trade and prohibition 1800-1928. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 177.
Musto, D. 1999 The American disease: Origins of narcotic control (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 118-23.
Newburn, T. and Elliott, J. (1999) Risk and Responses: Drug Prevention and Youth Justice. London: DPAS, paper 3.
Plant, M., (1994) Drugs in Perspective, London, Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd. 52-57
Robertson, R., (1997) Heroine Aids Society, London, Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd. 35-39.
Ruggerio, V. and South, N. (1995) Eurodrugs: Drug Use, Markets and Trafficking in Europe. London: UCL Press. p.3.
Sargent, M., (1992) Women, drugs and policy in Sydney, London and Amsterdam, Newcastle upon Tyne: Athenaeum Press Ltd. 91-92.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2007 Annual report 2007. Web.
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