What is the relationship between drug abuse and criminal behaviour?

... What is the relationship between drug abuse and criminal behaviour? By the early 1990s, Britain had developed a polydrug culture with the use of a variety of illegal and legal drugs (Davis & Ditton, 1990). No longer is drug culture supposedly hidden away in a sub-culture; now it is argued that it is part of mainstream culture. In Britain the link between heroin use and crime became more noticeable since the 1980s with increased concern in the 1990s about the growth of organised gang crime in the inner cities, e.g. Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and South London. The illegality of certain drugs obviously makes their possession, supply or preparation and manufacture an offence (McBride & McCoy, 1982) but the debate about the drugs-crime relationship is wider than this. Studies have largely focused on heroin and crime tending to exclude more casual recreational drug use (McBride & McCoy, 1982) and it is important to remember that

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