PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES AND VIOLENCE
by Jeffrey A. Roth

Series: Research in Brief, US Dept. of Justice Published: February 1994

Research on humans and many animal species suggests there are several neurobehavioral links between violence and psychoactive substances:

• Alcohol is the only psychoactive drug that in many individuals tends to increase aggressive behavior temporarily while it is taking effect. However, factors at other levels--behavior patterns when people are not drinking, the setting in which people drink, and local drinking customs, for example--influence the strength of this relationship.
• Marijuana and opiates temporarily inhibit violent behavior, but withdrawal from opiate addiction tends to exaggerate both aggressive and defensive responses to provocations.

note (Important! Common, yet incorrect beliefs dispelled here!):

On the other hand, several common assumptions about connections between drugs and violence are called into question by research findings:

• There is no evidence to support the claim that snorting or injecting cocaine stimulates violent behavior. However, research is urgently needed on the behavioral effects of smoking cocaine in crack form, which affects the brain more directly.
• Anecdotal reports notwithstanding, no research evidence supports the notion that becoming high on hallucinogens, amphetamines, or PCP stimulates violent behavior in any systematic manner. The anecdotes usually describe chronic users with histories of psychosis or antisocial behavior, which may or may not be related to their chronic use of drugs.
• Occasional anecdotes about " 'roid rages"--violent outbursts by men who use anabolic steroids to accelerate muscle growth--appear to describe isolated coincidences rather than any common, systematic effect.

Psychoactive Substances and Violence by Jeffrey A. Roth

Issues and Findings

Discussed in the Research in Brief: The current status of research on the links connecting violence to alcohol and illegal psychoactive drugs, and evaluations of interventions to prevent violence related to these substances.

Key issues: Correlations between violence and psychoactive substances; the social, economic, cultural, psycho-social, neurobehavioral, and other factors that explain the correlations; and prevention strategies for reducing the violence associated with these substances.

Key findings:

• Research has uncovered strong correlations between violence and psycho-active substances, including alcohol and illegal drugs, but the underlying relationships differ by type of drug.
• The links between violence and psychoactive substances involve broad social and economic forces, the settings in which people obtain and consume the substances, and biological processes that underlie all human behavior. These factors interact in chains of events that may extend back from an intermediate triggering event such as an argument to long-term predisposing processes that begin in childhood.
• Of all psychoactive substances, alcohol is the only one whose consumption has been shown to commonly increase aggression. After large doses of amphetamines, cocaine, LSD, and PCP, certain individuals may experience violent outbursts, probably because of preexisting psychosis. Research is needed on the pharmacological effects of crack, which enters the brain more directly than cocaine used in other forms.
• Alcohol drinking and violence are linked through pharmacological effects on behavior, through expectations that heavy drinking and violence go together in certain settings, and through patterns of binge drinking and fighting that sometimes develop in adolescence.
• The most promising strategies for reducing alcohol-related violence are to reduce underage drinking through substance abuse preventive education, taxes, law enforcement, and peer pressure.
• Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing:
  • disputes among rival distributors, arguments and robberies involving buyers and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug money and, more speculatively, social and economic interactions between the illegal markets and the surrounding communities.
  • Illegal drug markets. Illegal drug markets operate outside the world of contract law, courts and mediators for resolving disputes, and business customs that distinguish socially acceptable from unac- ceptable approaches to buying and selling. Illegal markets often develop substitute mechanisms that involve the threat or actual use of violence. Examples include:
• Violence by drug distributors in the course of territorial disputes between rival organizations, threats of violence to make "staff" obey organizational rules, violent punishment of rulebreakers to keep the threats credible, battles with police, and protection of sellers or drugs on the street.
• Violence between buyer and seller during a drug transaction, caused, for example, by attempted robbery of one or the other, failure to hand over drugs or money, or "honest" misunderstandings of local rules of the game on the part of buyers and sellers.
• Violence involving people other than buyers and sellers who are found around drug markets--third parties such as innocent bystanders and people operating in related illegal markets for "protection," guns, or prostitution.

As places where violence tends to occur for the reasons listed above, illegal drug markets may also serve as "magnets." As such, they attract valuable drugs and cash, weapons, and people who are accustomed to violence. The mix of these ingredients creates hazardous conditions for robberies and other forms of violence that may not be directly related to drugs.

Obtaining drug purchase money. In some settings, the need for money to buy drugs also increases the chance of a violent encounter. A taxi driver carrying a passenger late at night, for example, is presumably at greater risk of being robbed if the passenger wants to buy drugs but lacks the cash to do so. While robbery is still a common way to obtain money to buy drugs, it has been replaced by drug selling in some large cities.

Using alcohol and drugs. If alcohol caused violence only by making individuals behave more aggressively, violence would be equally common in all places where drinking occurs. In fact, however, most drinking places are rarely scenes of violence. A few acquire reputations as "animal houses" or "fighting bars," where people expect drinking and violence to go hand in hand.....

Note the homicide rates per 100,000 for the years prior to, during, and following Prohibition of alcohol in the United States, according to "Murder Statistics from Statistical Abstract of the United States," U.S. Dept. of Commerce.

The ten years preceding Prohibition		Prohibition begins 1920		Prohibition ends 1933
1910 - 4.6		1920 - 6.8		1933 - 9.7
1911 - 5.5		1921 - 8.1		1934 - 9.5
1912 - 5.4		1922 - 8.0		1935 - 8.3
1913 - 6.1		1923 - 7.8		1936 - 8.0
1914 - 6.2		1924 - 8.1		1937 - 7.6
1915 - 5.9		1925 - 8.3		1938 - 6.8
1916 - 6.3		1926 - 8.4		1939 - 6.4
1917 - 6.9		1927 - 8.4		1940 - 6.3
1918 - 6.5		1928 - 8.6		1941 - 6.0
1919 - 7.2		1929 - 8.4		1942 - 5.9
		1930 - 8.8		1943 - 5.1
		1931 - 9.2		1944 - 5.0
		1932 - 9.0

With the end of Prohibition, the homicide rate fell every year, until it had been cut almost in half. But at its height, the homicide rate under Prohibition was similar to modern rates for homicide and non-negligent manslaughter, as recorded in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. These have hovered around 9.2 per 100,000 (plus or minus 1) for more than twenty years - since the first "War on Drugs" and crackdown on smugglers was launched.

Anti-prohibition advocates point to the precipitous decline in homicide rates following repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, and to research showing most "drug-related" homicides to be drug-trade homicides -- murders caused by prohibition. The CASA paper concedes that legalization would reduce this type of violence, but asserts that the larger part of the violence problem is due to the psychopharmacological effects of drugs on their users -- violence resulting from intoxication. The evidence they present is a 1984 study by Paul Goldstein and Henry Brownstein, which found that about 60 percent of the drug-related homicides in New York State in 1984 resulted from intoxication.

But an examination of the Goldstein/Brownstein paper reveals that the drug involved in the vast majority of these homicides was *alcohol*, not any of the illegal drugs, as CASA implied. In fact, alcohol is mentioned in seven of the eight case summaries.

Furthermore, CASA ignored other more relevant research -- by the same authors -- that soundly refutes their claim. A Goldstein/Brownstein study of "drug-related" homicides in New York City in 1988, after the arrival of crack cocaine, found that 74 percent of the drug-related homicides resulted from the drug trade -- from *prohibition* -- and only 14 percent were traceable to psychopharmacological causes, with two out of three of *those* cases involving alcohol use. As the researchers concluded, "while these events [homicides] were tragedies, they are hardly the basis for claims that crack induces violent behavior."

CASA's propaganda effort is only one in a series of attempts by prohibitionists to counter the overwhelming arguments for reform. About a year ago, the DEA published a document entitled "How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate," released as "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization." This document is literally saturated with falsehoods and distortions. Two gems from the DEA book are: a reference to a book which doesn't exist; and such serious misstatements about Netherlands drug policy and crime stats that the Dutch foreign minister filed a formal complaint with the US Department of State.