Author: Shatakshi Dixit New Law College, BVDU, Pune
Student Editor: Diksha Bhasin New Law College, BVDU, Pune
ABSTRACT
People in this world dwell with different personalities. When we talk about drugs three types of people exist. One genre of people may not like the taste of the drug and the feel it gives and make up their minds to never consume it later, others may enjoy the feel and consume it occasionally while, there also exists the third type who gets addicted to drugs and consume it every day. Consumption of drugs affects the working of the brain of a person and also changes the way a person behaves. Marijuana, Cocaine, LSD, Nicotine, Alcohol, etc., are the types of drugs to which people get addicted. At first, people think that they can control the quantity and how often they consume the drug but as time passes, the brain changes the working of the body, making that person an addict which leads to various crimes. Crime does not only happen after consumption of excessive drugs, mere consumption is also a crime. In this article we are going to discuss about this in detail.
KEYWORDS– c
INTRODUCTION-
The nexus established among alcohol, drugs, crime and violence has crossed many thresholds in various fields of life. Any and every person can face the problem of being a drug addict regardless of his age, gender, class, etc, whereas, after a survey it was found that people who are single are more likely to get addicted than those who are married and the people who are in urban areas are more likely to get addicted than those who are in rural areas. Addiction is not when you suffer from any serious ailment due to the drug; addiction is when urge to use the drug is too strong that you cannot stop yourself from using it even if you want to stop.
EFFECT ON BRAIN–
Brain of every person makes a person do repetitive actions of the things which makes him feel good, and motivates you to do it regularly. Addictive drugs contain a substance called dopamine, which creates a fake atmosphere of pleasure and takes you away from reality for a short period of time. To chase this, people get into taking more and more of this dopamine. This also happens because after some time, if taken regularly, the person’s brain gets used to that amount of dopamine and stops creating that fake atmosphere, now to create the same, they need more amount of that chemical, this increases their dosage and today’s youth is unknowingly proud of it. All this also mitigates their interest in spending time with their family and loved ones and all of a sudden company of their “partner in crime” starts giving them more pleasure. Continuous consumption of drugs also causes other impairments in brain and affects the other chemicals present. It causes a negative impact on-
Learning ability
Memorizing power
Decision taking power
Delivery of judgment in daily life, etcetera.
RELATION BETWEEN DRUGS AND CRIME
There exists no single and direct relationship between crime and drugs; they are related in various ways. One of the most direct relationships consist of all the basic four stages, which includes-
Manufacture of drugs
Distribution of drugs
Possession of drugs, and
Consumption of drugs, where drugs means all those drugs, which have the potential to make a person addict. Examples of such drugs are amphetamines, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.
Another relation of crime with drugs is established when the effect of drugs make people indulge in wrong deeds which even leads to violence.
DRUG RELATED CRIME SUMMARIZED
Violation of laws related to possession, use, manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs.
For Instance- cultivation and sale of marijuana, use of marijuana, production of methamphetamine, selling of cocaine, heroin, etc;
Offenses caused by the effect of drugs; offenses caused in need for money for continuous intake of drugs.
For Instance- inacceptable behavior due to drug effect, violence among drug dealers due to competition, stealing of money and other crimes for buying drugs.
Number of illegal activities is increased and people are more exposed to the environment that encourages crime.
For Instance- increased exposure of youth to illegal markets; people find it as a source of satisfying their need by earning money, more skills related to crime are learned by the people as they are more exposed to such people and market.
NUMBER OF DRUG USERS EXCEEDS NON USERS IN COMMITING CRIME
In a survey, individuals were asked how many times they have troubled themselves, in the way getting caught by police, when they were high on cocaine, marijuana, etc, compared to the situation when they were sober. It was found that approximately 91% times people do something wrong or get themselves in trouble when they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In another survey when victims of some merciless crimes were asked whether they could remember if the criminals were under the influence of any kind of drug, 59% of the inquired victims stated that among the identified offenders more than half of them were under the influence of alcohol alone and the remaining were under the combined influence of drugs and alcohol.
CRIME COMMITTED FOR CONTINUOS CONSUMPTION OF DRUGS-
One of the dimensions of crimes associated with drugs also includes committing crime to obtain monetary benefits in order to continue their drug habits. The types of crime committed by the people to get money to buy drugs include robbery, kidnapping, theft and also burglary. Thus, people not only commit crime after consuming drugs, but they also commit crime to consume drugs.
TRAFFICKING OF DRUGS AS SOURCE OF GENERATING CRIME-
Drug trafficking is directly related to generation of various merciless crimes. There can be various reasons behind this direct relationship and some of them are –
The area or market where illicit drugs are available have less effect of legal controls and tend to be more prone to violent and illegal activities.
Competition and feeling of envy among drug dealers.
Race to earn more customers.
Easy availability of arms and ammunitions.
RELATION BETWEEN CRIME AND DRUGS
There should be cautious determination and interpretation of the relationship between crime and drugs, as there can be many misleading factors which may make us deduce a different relationship altogether. For instance
There can be various reasons behind a crime committed, like situation, emotion, family, mental state, etc and drug serves as only the part of the same. This does not mean that if the offender would not have been under the influence of the drug, he would not have committed that crime.
Some aspects related to drugs are subjective in nature and serve different meaning to different people, which lead to failure in providing correct statistics.
The information provided by the criminals related to drug consumption may be an exaggerated one or it can also be a mitigated one. True reports upon which we can rely are obtained through urinalysis, but these are effective only in case of a very recent usage of drug.
CONCLUSION
From the survey and statistics, we deduce that drug users commit more crime than non users. All the wrongful activities done by drug users create violence. Assessment of influence of drugs on crime needs reliable information or data. The amount of drug consumption which creates nuisance or violence is difficult to suggest as it is subjective in nature and varies from person to person.