tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/drug-crimes-16143/articlesDrug Crimes – The Conversation2024-03-28T12:50:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2259912024-03-28T12:50:35Z2024-03-28T12:50:35ZThe amazing story of the man who created the latest narco-state in the Americas, and how the United States helped him every step of the way − until now<p>When Juan Orlando Hernández was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/honduras-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-corruption-trial-7c43423f12ff71859c370be2fc6ac5b0">convicted by a federal jury</a> in Manhattan in early March 2024, it marked a spectacular fall from grace: from being courted in the U.S. as a friendly head of state to facing the rest of his life behind bars, convicted of cocaine importation and weapons offenses.</p>
<p>“Juan Orlando Hernández abused his position as President of Honduras to operate the country as a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed with virtual impunity,” said <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-honduras-convicted-manhattan-federal-court">U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland</a> following the jury conviction. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-honduras-convicted-manhattan-federal-court">Anne Milgram</a>, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, added: “When the leader of Honduras and the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel work hand-in-hand to send deadly drugs into the United States, both deserve to be accountable.”</p>
<p>The conviction was a victory for the Justice Department and the DEA. During Hernández’s two terms in office, from 2014 to 2022, he and his acolytes transported more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-honduras-convicted-manhattan-federal-court">according to U.S. prosecutors</a>. The former head of state now faces a mandatory sentence of up to 40 years in prison; sentencing is scheduled for June 26. </p>
<p>But there’s more to this story. </p>
<p>As I explore in the book “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/21st-Century-Democracy-Promotion-in-the-Americas-Standing-up-for-the-Polity/Heine-Weiffen/p/book/9780415626378">21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: Standing Up for the Polity</a>,” written in collaboration with the <a href="https://www.open.ac.uk/people/bw4844">Open University’s Britta Weiffen</a>, Honduras is a tragic example of what happens when a country becomes a narco-state. While its people suffer the consequences – the World Bank reports that about <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/honduras/overview">half the country currently lives under poverty</a> – its leaders grow rich through the drugs trade.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the way Hernández came to power and maintained that position for so long could provide “Exhibit A” in any indictment of U.S. policy toward Central America – and Latin America more generally – over the past few decades. </p>
<h2>Growing ties with cartels</h2>
<p>Up to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-arrests-united-states-honduras-extradition-207d739fe73c844ad5cf182eec030a8a">Hernández’s arrest in Tegucigalpa</a>, the Honduran capital, and extradition to the United States in January 2022, his biggest enabler had been none other than the U.S. government itself. </p>
<p>Presidents <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/15/president-obama-announces-presidential-delegation-honduras-attend-inaugu">Barack Obama</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/honduras-president-narcotrafficking-hernandez/2021/02/11/1fa96044-5f8c-11eb-ac8f-4ae05557196e_story.html">Donald Trump</a> <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/18/readout-vice-president-bidens-meeting-honduran-president-juan-orlando">and Joe Biden</a> all backed Hernández and allowed him to inflict enormous harm to Honduras and to the United States in the process.</p>
<p>How so? To answer this question, some background is needed. </p>
<p>On June 28, 2009, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/28/honduras-coup-president-zelaya">a classic military coup took place</a> in Honduras. In the wee hours of the morning, while still in his pajamas, President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya was unceremoniously escorted by armed soldiers from his home and <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lt-honduras-divided-070709-2009jul07-story.html">flown to a neighboring country</a>. The coup leaders alleged that, by calling for a referendum on reforming the Honduran Constitution, the government was moving toward removing the one-term presidential term limit enshrined in the country’s charter and opening the door to authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Initially, then-President Barack Obama <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE55S5J2/">protested the coup</a> and took measures against those responsible – the right-wing opponents of Zelaya. </p>
<p>But the administration eventually relented and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN07503526/">allowed the coup leaders to prevail</a>, largely due to pressure from Republicans, who saw Zelaya as being <a href="https://www.cfr.org/interview/honduran-politics-and-chavez-factor">too close to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez</a>, whose leftist agenda was deemed by the GOP as a threat to U.S. interests. </p>
<p>The coup-makers simply ran the clock against the upcoming election date and installed their own candidate in the presidency, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/30/honduras-lobo-president">Porfirio Lobo of the National party</a>, whose son Fabio was also later convicted of cocaine trafficking. </p>
<h2>Washington looks the other way</h2>
<p>Lobo laid the foundations of Honduras as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56947595">new century’s first narco-state</a>, allowing drug cartels to infiltrate the highest echelons of government and the security apparatus as cocaine trade became an increasingly central plank of the country’s economy.</p>
<p>All the while, the U.S. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/08/american-funding-honduran-security-forces-blood-on-our-hands">pumped tens of millions of dollars</a> <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/should-the-u-s-still-be-sending-military-aid-to-honduras">into building up Honduras’ police and military</a>, despite widespread allegations of being engaged in corruption, complicit in the drugs trade and engaged in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/honduras">human rights abuses</a>.</p>
<p>The dollars continued to flow when Lobo was succeeded in 2013 by his buddy and fellow National party member, Juan Orlando Hernández.</p>
<p>In 2017, Hernández – an ardent supporter of the 2009 coup – ran for a second term after the Supreme Court of Honduras <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0NE2T9/">pronounced this to be perfectly legal</a>.</p>
<p>Many Hondurans believe Hernández <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-honduran-government-is-trying-to-steal-an-election/">stole the November 2017 elections</a>. The vote count was suspended in the middle of the night as Hernández was running behind, and when the polls opened in the morning, he <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-honduran-government-is-trying-to-steal-an-election/">miraculously emerged as a winner</a>.</p>
<p>Despite widespread allegations of election fraud, the U.S. quickly recognized the result, congratulating <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/22/politics/us-honduras-election-results/index.html">Hernández on his win</a>.</p>
<p>Emboldened by his success, Hernández continued to build up Honduras as the new century’s first narco-state of the Americas.</p>
<p>In 2018, the president’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former member of the Honduran Parliament, was arrested in the United States for his association with the Cartel de Sinaloa, the Mexican drug cartel. This entity valued his services so much that <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-honduran-congressman-tony-hern-ndez-sentenced-life-prison-and-ordered-forfeit">they named a particular strain of cocaine after him</a>, stamping the bags as “TH.” Tony Hernández was convicted on four charges in 2019, sentenced to 30 years in prison, and has been in U.S. federal prison ever since. </p>
<p>President Hernández denied any association with the cartel, but the evidence pointed to the contrary. As <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/03/18/a-court-case-rocks-the-president-of-honduras">reported in The Economist</a>, in a New York City trial, one accused drug trafficker alleged that Hernández took bribes for “helping cocaine reach the United States.” Another witness testified that the president had taken two bribes in 2013, before being elected; a former cartel leader testified that the president had been paid $250,000 to protect him from being arrested.</p>
<h2>‘Complicit or gullible’</h2>
<p>Given Hernández’s history in Honduras, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/08/juan-orlando-hernndez-honduras-convicted/">repeated claims of U.S. government officials</a> that they simply didn’t know of his crimes ring hollow.</p>
<p>Honduras became a narco-state, in part, because U.S. policymakers looked the other way as it did so. They embraced Hernández because he was ideologically more palatable and subservient to Washington’s wishes compared with his rival, Zelaya. But as the trial verdict in Manhattan makes clear, it was a decision with disastrous consequences.</p>
<p>As one State Department official put it, “Today’s verdict makes all of us who collaborated with (Hernández) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/08/juan-orlando-hernndez-honduras-convicted/">look either complicit or gullible</a>.” </p>
<p>The latter may be the more charitable assessment. But the truth is more uncomfortable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am a member of the Party for Democracy in Chile and and affiliated with the Foro de Political Exterior, a Chilean foreign policy think tank.</span></em></p>Washington looked the other way as coup leaders and drugs cartels conspired to turn Honduras into a center of the cocaine trade.Jorge Heine, Interim Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927882022-11-16T13:29:39Z2022-11-16T13:29:39Z317,793 people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2020 despite the growing legalization movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493178/original/file-20221103-24-ztrf84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C31%2C5217%2C2983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's the first year that most drug arrests were not for marijuana possession.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/passing-the-cannabis-joint-royalty-free-image/1360115234?phrase=marijuana&adppopup=true">Cappi Thompson/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<p>More than 300,000 people were arrested for cannabis possession in 2020, FBI records show. Meanwhile, the drug is being <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-medical-marijuana-laws.aspx">legally sold for a profit in 19 states</a>.</p>
<p>That arrest number may sound high, but arrests have actually been going down each year since 2010 as more states legalize medical or recreational use of the drug. In 2019, for example, <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-29">more than 500,000 marijuana possession arrests were reported</a>, so the 2020 arrest numbers represent a single-year decline of 36%. </p>
<p>In another sign of change, 2020 – the most recent year for which I consider the data reliable – was the first year that marijuana possession was not the most common cause for a drug arrest. Out of roughly 1.16 million drug arrests nationwide that year, 36% were for possessing “other dangerous nonnarcotic drugs” like cocaine and methamphetamine. Just over a quarter (27.5%) were for <a href="https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/downloads">possessing marijuana</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these declines, racial disparities have not changed over the past decade. Black Americans accounted for about <a href="https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/docApi">38.8%</a> of marijuana possession arrests in 2020 despite representing just 13.6% of the U.S. population and using marijuana at the same rate as white Americans, <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2020-nsduh-detailed-tables">according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health</a>. </p>
<p>There are some caveats to consider when looking at 2020’s figures. Safety measures taken to limit the spread of COVID-19 – like lockdowns, school closures and work-from-home mandates – resulted in <a href="https://safetyandjusticechallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/The-Impact-of-COVID-19-on-Crime-Arrests-and-Jail-Populations-JFA-Institute.pdf">fewer police-citizen contacts</a>. The number of arrests for all drugs fell by 25% compared with 2019, even though no other drugs were legalized that year. Still, arrests for marijuana declined at an even steeper rate.</p>
<h2>New data reporting problems</h2>
<p>Arrest data for 2021 is also problematic, but for different reasons.</p>
<p>Since the 1920s, the FBI has published crime statistics reported by local law enforcement agencies using the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/five-things-to-know-about-nibrs-112520">Summary Reporting System</a>. This system always had limitations, notably only counting only the most serious offense even when an arrest involves more than one charge. To improve data collection, the FBI created the <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/national-incident-based-reporting-system-nibrs#:%7E:text=As%20of%20January%201%2C%202021,reporting%20in%20the%20United%20States">National Incident-Based Reporting System</a> in the 1980s. The new system, NIBRS, collects much more detailed data. </p>
<p>The FBI has been trying to get law enforcement agencies to use NIBRS for years. Because the transition has been slow, the FBI has continued reporting crime data from the old system, too. <a href="https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/the-fbi-doesnt-know-how-many-marijuana-arrests-were-made-in-2021-and-its-their-own-damn-fault">Advocates</a>, <a href="https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-fbi-marijuana-arrest-data-riddled-with-inconsistencies-as-agency-touts-changes-to-reporting-system/">journalists</a> and <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/expert/katharine-neill-harris">researchers like me</a> relied on the old system because more police departments used it. </p>
<p>But on Jan. 1, 2021, the FBI started reporting only NIBRS-collected data. The <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/five-things-to-know-about-nibrs-112520">agency insists</a> this is not a serious issue, but only <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/us/fbi-national-crime-report-2021-data/">52%</a> of agencies fully reported data last year. Two of the nation’s largest police departments, New York City and Los Angeles, did not report at all. </p>
<p>The low rate of agency participation suggests the FBI’s 2021 estimate of <a href="https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/arrest">170,856</a> marijuana possession arrests is a big undercount. For instance, in 2020, Florida reported <a href="https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/arrest">68,614 total drug abuse violations</a>. In 2021, it reported 104 – even though there were no changes to drug laws in the state between those two years. Though growing pains are expected with a major data collection transition, as a researcher I find it concerning to have such low confidence in the numbers meant to capture how laws are enforced. </p>
<h2>Other measures to consider</h2>
<p>Arrests for cannabis possession are dropping, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the legal consequences of marijuana use are disappearing.</p>
<p>Courts often require people to go to treatment for cannabis use. The legal system has been the largest referrer to treatment for <a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/series/56">cannabis use since 1995</a>. In 2019, courts, probation and parole offices and diversion programs referred more than <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt35314/2019_TEDS_3-1-22.pdf">100,000</a> individuals for cannabis use treatment. That accounts for roughly half (49.2%) of all cannabis treatment admissions to publicly funded facilities. Roughly 30% of these justice system referrals came from states in which marijuana use and sales are legal.</p>
<p>In research currently under peer review, my colleague <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/expert/christopher-f-kulesza">Christopher Kulesza</a> and I show that legalization is not associated with a significant decline in justice system referrals to cannabis treatment. Black and Latino adults and juveniles are more likely to be referred to treatment by the justice system than their white counterparts in both states in which marijuana is legal and those where it isn’t.</p>
<p>Failure to comply with mandated treatment programs can result in the same negative consequences as an arrest and conviction, including detrimental effects on an individual’s <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305464">health</a>, education and <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/case-marijuana-decriminalization#:%7E:text=Decriminalization%20would%20result%20in%20a,arrests%20following%20the%20policy%20change">employment prospects</a>. Our findings, along with <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2019.1593007">other</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.3435s">research</a>, suggest that policymakers who want to reduce these consequences must find ways to root out arrest practices that unfairly target minority users and pay more attention to who is being referred for treatment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Neill Harris received funding from Ohio State University's Drug Enforcement Policy Center for the research project discussed in this article. </span></em></p>Arrest numbers reflect a nearly 40% decline from 2019, but the statistics come with some caveats.Katharine Neill Harris, Fellow in Drug Policy, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1722602021-12-02T12:26:08Z2021-12-02T12:26:08ZStop and search: new data shows continued ethnic disproportionality<p>Each year the Home Office publishes data on stop and search from all 43 police forces in England and Wales. The latest figures <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-powers-and-procedures-stop-and-search-and-arrests-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2021/police-powers-and-procedures-stop-and-search-and-arrests-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2021">for the year ending March 2021</a> reveal a familiar pattern: stop and search disproportionately affects black people and targets drugs, not serious violence.</p>
<p>The figures come as the government plans to introduce further stop-and-search powers as part of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-factsheets/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-overarching-factsheet">police crime sentencing and courts bill</a> in the form of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/serious-violence-reduction-orders-to-be-piloted-in-4-police-forces">serious violence reduction orders</a>. Campaigners have warned that the bill will <a href="https://www.criminaljusticealliance.org/blog/how-the-pcsc-bill-will-deepen-racial-inequality/">deepen racial inequality</a> in the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>There were 695,009 stops and searches between April 1 2020 and March 31 2021, an increase of 24% from the previous year. This was driven by a 36% increase in searches for suspected drug possession (69% of all stop and search). While <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jul/27/policing-minister-defends-changes-to-stop-and-search-in-plan">the current political focus</a> is on the ability of stop and search to reduce knife crime, it is evident that drugs remain the dominant grounds for searches. Black people were seven times more likely to be searched for drug offences than white people, despite the fact that <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2018-to-2019-csew">black people are no more likely to use drugs</a>. Rather than being indicative of increased drug crime or drug use, increases in stop and searches for drug possession <a href="https://www.release.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/publications/The%20Colour%20of%20Injustice.pdf">likely reflect inequalities in stop and search practices</a>.</p>
<p>The majority of stops and searches yield no results, with 77% in the past year resulting in no further police action. The latest figures report that offensive weapons were found in only one in 50 stop and searches over the past year. The proportion of searches for offensive weapons decreased in the latest year and accounted for only 12% of searches. While the government and police forces continue to justify the use of stop and search as a method to disrupt knife crime and violence, these figures highlight that broader police powers are an <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-and-search-disproportionately-affects-black-communities-yet-police-powers-are-being-extended-165477">ineffective approach</a>.</p>
<p>Racial disproportionality in stop and search has been <a href="https://www.statewatch.org/media/documents/news/2009/may/uk-ho-stats-police.pdf">reported every year since records began in 2007</a>. For the year ending March 2021, black people were seven times more likely to be searched than white people for searches under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and associated legislation (the most frequently used stop-and-search powers). This was a slight decrease from the previous year, when black people were nine times more likely to be searched. </p>
<p>However, on closer examination, the decrease in disproportionality this past year was due to an increase in the number of white people searched, not a decrease in the number of black people searched. In 2019-20 there were six stops of white people per 1,000, which increased to eight stops per 1,000 population in 2020-21. In 2019-20 and 2020-21, black people were stopped and searched at a rate of 54 stops per 1,000 people. </p>
<p>Black people were stopped and searched at a higher rate than white people by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-powers-and-procedures-stop-and-search-and-arrests-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2021/police-powers-and-procedures-stop-and-search-and-arrests-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2021">every force in England and Wales</a> in the most recent year, though there is significant variation between different police force areas. For example, the rate at which black people were searched compared to white people varied from 1.8 times more in Merseyside to 19.5 in Dorset. </p>
<p>The reasons for this disproportionality are <a href="https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-content/uploads/disproportionate-use-of-police-powers-spotlight-on-stop-search-and-use-of-force.pdf">entrenched and complex</a>, stemming from implicit and institutional biases and wider structural inequalities experienced by minority groups. While attempts to understand disproportionality through <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/exploration-of-an-alternative-approach-to-calculating-stop-and-search-rates-in-the-metropolitan-police-force-area-experimental-statistics/exploration-of-an-alternative-approach-to-calculating-stop-and-search-rates-in-the-metropolitan-police-force-area-experimental-statistics">different analytical tools</a> is important, evidence that the use of stop and search has <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/confidence-in-the-local-police/latest">damaged trust in the police</a> among black and ethnic minority communities is clear. </p>
<p>The latest figures from the <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/confidence-in-the-local-police/latest">Crime Survey for England and Wales</a> show that the percentage of black people who have confidence in police has been dropping since 2017-18. In 2019-20, 64% of black people reported having confidence in their local police (76% in 2017-18) compared to 74% of white people. </p>
<h2>Rethinking stop and search</h2>
<p>The stated legislative purpose of stop-and-search powers is investigative – to confirm or allay suspicions that an offence has taken place (carrying an illegal item) or is about to take place (carrying equipment to conduct a burglary). The police, concerned with enforcing the law and promoting public safety, believe the widespread use of the tactic is justified if they are able to detect even a small number of offences, and maintain that their presence and the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315885940/stop-search-police-legitimacy-ben-bradford">“threat” of stop and search use</a> is successful in deterring crime. From this perspective, <a href="https://www.sccjr.ac.uk/publications/stop-and-search-in-scotland-an-evaluation-of-police-practice/">any stop-and-search encounter can be justified</a> as either detecting crime or deterring further crime. Yet, there is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/58/5/1212/4827589">limited evidence to suggest</a> this is successful.</p>
<p>New legislation, through the police crime sentencing and courts bill, will grant police more powers to use stop and search to target serious violence – a strategy we know will likely impact black and ethnic minority groups. This has ramifications for trust and cooperation with the police, impacting criminal justice outcomes and exacerbating the number of black and minority ethnic people in the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>The increases in stop and search during 2020-21 continue to yield the same results as years past – targeting black people and mainly resulting in the detection of low-level drug possession offences. These findings suggest that police forces across England and Wales should seek to reduce the use of stop and search, and to rethink its utility in targeting low-level drug offences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amal receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bisola Akintoye and Winifred Agnew-Pauley do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the past year, black people were seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.Winifred Agnew-Pauley, Research Fellow, Policing Institute for the Eastern Region (PIER); PhD Candidate, Flinders University, Anglia Ruskin UniversityAmal Ali, PhD candidate in Social Research Methods, London School of Economics and Political ScienceBisola Akintoye, PhD Candidate in Social Policy at the University of Kent, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508062020-12-10T13:36:42Z2020-12-10T13:36:42ZOregon just decriminalized all drugs – here’s why voters passed this groundbreaking reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374023/original/file-20201209-21-1aik374.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C7%2C5111%2C3423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">According to Oregon law, possessing a small amount of drugs for personal consumption is now a civil – rather than criminal – offense. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-schoolgirl-reaching-for-cocaine-in-her-back-royalty-free-image/1132980785?adppopup=true">Peter Dazeley via Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize the possession of all drugs on Nov. 3, 2020. </p>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminalization_and_Addiction_Treatment_Initiative_(2020)">Measure 110</a>, a ballot initiative <a href="https://www.klcc.org/post/election-preview-measure-110-would-make-oregon-1st-state-decriminalize-drug-use">funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group backed in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg</a>, passed with more than 58% of the vote. Possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. </p>
<p>Those drugs are still against the law, as is selling them. But possession is now a civil – not criminal – violation that may result in a fine or court-ordered therapy, not jail. Marijuana, which Oregon legalized in 2014, remains fully legal.</p>
<p>Oregon’s move is radical for the United States, but several European countries <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/decriminalization-of-narcotics/decriminalization-of-narcotics.pdf">have decriminalized drugs to some extent</a>. There are three main arguments for this major drug policy reform. </p>
<h2>#1. Drug prohibition has failed</h2>
<p>In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drugs to be “public enemy number one” and launched a “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how-president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/">war on drugs</a>” that continues today.</p>
<p>The ostensible rationale for harshly punishing drug users is to deter drug use. But decades of research – including <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009196">our own on marijuana</a> and <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/drugs-and-drug-policy/book258916">drugs generally</a> – has found the <a href="https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-prison-paradox-incarceration-not-safer">deterrent effect of strict criminal punishment to be small</a>, if it exists at all. This is especially true among young people, who <a href="http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-vol2_2019.pdf">are the majority of drug users</a>. </p>
<p>This is partly due to the nature of addiction, and also because <a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence">there are simply limits to how much punishment can deter crime</a>. As a result, the U.S. has both <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/">the world’s highest incarceration rate</a> and <a href="http://www.espad.org/sites/espad.org/files/TD0116475ENN.pdf">among the highest rates of illegal drug use</a>. Roughly <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html">1 in 5 incarcerated people in the United States is in for a drug offense</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dNcNUjn4UQEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=Crime+in+the+Making:+Pathways+and+Turning+Points+Through+Life.&ots=UfXRYQfehU&sig=jAyUyb68tCm1Bw9dXXtlyUlXPro#v=onepage&q=Crime%20in%20the%20Making%3A%20Pathways%20and%20Turning%20Points%20Through%20Life.&f=false">Criminologists find</a> that other consequences of problematic drug use – such as harm to health, reduced quality of life and strained personal relationships – are more effective deterrents than criminal sanctions. </p>
<p>Because criminalizing drugs does not really prevent drug use, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3342518?seq=1">decriminalizing does not really increase it</a>. Portugal, <a href="https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/">which decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001</a> in response to high illicit drug use, has <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">much lower rates of drug use than the European average</a>. Use of cocaine among young adults age 15 to 34, for example, is 0.3% in Portugal, compared to 2.1% across the EU. <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">Amphetamine and MDMA consumption is likewise lower in Portugal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman with a dog waits at a white van while a man drinks from a tiny cup" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mobile drug-services van in Lisbon gives out methadone, a medication for people with opioid use disorder, in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/patient-rita-pestana-holds-her-puppy-while-her-husband-news-photo/857614826?adppopup=true">Horacio Villalobos - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>2. Decriminalization puts money to better use</h2>
<p>Arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people for drug-related crimes is expensive. </p>
<p>The Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that all government drug prohibition-related expenditures <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/budgetary-effects-ending-drug-prohibition">were US$47.8 billion nationally</a> in 2016. Oregon spent about $375 million on drug prohibition in that year. </p>
<p>Oregon will now divert some the money previously used on drug enforcement to pay for <a href="https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/16/oregon-2020-election-ballot-measure-110-decriminalize-drug-possession/3620146001/%22%22">about a dozen new drug prevention and treatment centers</a> statewide, which has been <a href="http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/04-01_rep_mdtreatmentorincarceration_ac-dp.pdf">found to be a significantly more cost-effective</a> strategy. Some tax revenue from <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/07/25/oregon-cannabis-tax-revenue-gets-higher-and-higher.html">recreational marijuana sales</a>, which exceeded $100 million in 2019, will also go to addiction and recovery services. </p>
<p>Oregon <a href="https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/citizen_engagement/Reports/2019-OCJC-SB1041-Report.pdf">spent about $470 million on substance abuse treatment</a> between 2017 and 2019.</p>
<p>Not everyone who uses drugs needs treatment. Decriminalization makes help accessible to those who do need it – and keeps both those users and recreational users out of jail.</p>
<h2>3. The drug war targets people of color</h2>
<p>Another aim of decriminalization is to mitigate the significant <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Disparity-by-Geography-The-War-on-Drugs-in-Americas-Cities.pdf">racial and ethnic disparities associated with drug enforcement</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and whit image of police arresting a Black man in a New York subway station; no faces are seen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York’s ‘stop and frisk’ policing most often resulted in marijuana possession charges and targeted young Black men. It was declared unconstitutional in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/saw-this-young-man-being-stopped-in-nyc-subway-by-two-news-photo/185494998?adppopup=true">Third Eye Corporation/Getty</a></span>
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<p>Illegal drug use is <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHNationalFindingsReport2018/NSDUHNationalFindingsReport2018.pdf">roughly comparable across race</a> in the U.S. But people of color are significantly more likely to be <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/pdfs/OAG_REPORT_ON_SQF_PRACTICES_NOV_2013.pdf">searched</a>, <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2020/06/message-director-racially-motivated-violence">arrested and imprisoned for a drug-related offense</a>. Drug crimes can incur long prison sentences.</p>
<p>Discretion in drug enforcement and sentencing means prohibition is among the <a href="https://newjimcrow.com/">leading causes of incarceration of people of color in the United States</a> – an injustice <a href="https://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/bipartisan-drug-policy-reform">many Americans on both sides of the aisle</a> increasingly recognize. </p>
<p>Freed up from policing drug use, departments may redirect their resources toward crime prevention and solving <a href="https://thecrimereport.org/2015/06/24/2015-06-reinventing-american-policing-a-seven-point-blueprin/">violent crimes like homicide and robbery</a>, which are time-consuming to investigate. That could help restore some trust between law enforcement and Oregon’s communities of color. </p>
<h2>Risks of decriminalization</h2>
<p>One common concern among Oregonians <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/15/measure-110-oergon-politics-decriminalize-drugs/">who voted against decriminalization</a> was that lessening criminal penalties would endanger children. </p>
<p>“I think it sends a really bad message to them, and influences their perception of the risks,” James O’Rourke, a defense attorney who helped organize the opposition to measure 110, <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/15/measure-110-oergon-politics-decriminalize-drugs/">told Oregon Public Broadcasting in October</a>.</p>
<p>But U.S. states that legalized marijuana haven’t seen adolescent use rise significantly. In fact, marijuana consumption among teens – <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.14939">though not among college-aged Americans</a> – actually <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737637">declined in some states with legal marijuana</a>. This may be because legal, regulated marijuana is more difficult for minors to get than black-market drugs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman browses various types of marijuana in glass jars on shelves, in well-lit, upscale setting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Customers must be 21 or older to purchase marijuana from dispensaries like Oregon’s Finest, in Portland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-shops-at-oregons-finest-a-marijuana-dispensary-in-news-photo/491438512?adppopup=true">Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research also shows that for some people, particularly the young, banning a behavior <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4675534/">makes it more alluring</a>. So defining drugs as a health concern rather than a crime could actually make them less appealing to young Oregonians.</p>
<p>Another worry about decriminalization is that it will attract people looking to use drugs. </p>
<p>So-called “drug tourism” <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/08/27/treating-not-punishing">hasn’t really been a problem for Portugal</a>, but it happened in Switzerland after officials in the 1980s and 1990s began officially “ignoring” heroin in Zurich’s Platzspitz Park. People came from across the country to <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/switzerland/articles/a-brief-history-of-zurichs-needle-park/">inject heroin in public, leaving discarded needles on the ground</a>. </p>
<p>The local government shut down Platzspitz Park. But rather than chase off or arrest those who frequented it, it began offering methadone and prescription heroin to <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inside_switzerlands_radical_drug_policy_innovation">help people with opioid use disorder</a>. Public injection, HIV rates and overdoses – which had all become a problem in Zurich – <a href="https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/01/21/switzerland-couldnt-stop-drug-users-so-it-started-supporting-them/">plummeted</a>. </p>
<p>Certain parts of Oregon already have higher rates of public drug consumption, namely Portland and Eugene. Because public drug use is still illegal in Oregon, however, we don’t expect a Platzspitz Park-style open drug scene to emerge.
These places should benefit from the expansion of methadone programs and other medication-assisted treatment, which is endorsed by the <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/opioids/ama-push-better-access-opioid-use-disorder-treatments">American Medical Association</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theolympian.com/opinion/editorials/article247180921.html">If neighboring Washington state decriminalizes drugs</a>, which it is considering, the chances of drug tourism would drop further. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<h2>Upside – and downside</h2>
<p>There are risks with any major policy change. The question is whether the new policy results in a net benefit. </p>
<p>In Portugal, full decriminalization has proven more humane and effective than criminalization. Because drug users don’t worry about facing criminal charges, those who need help are more likely to seek it – and <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/52ff6eb9-76c9-44a5-bc37-857fbbfedbdd/drug-policy-in-portugal-english-20120814.pdf">get it</a>. </p>
<p>Portugal’s <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11364/20191724_TDAT19001ENN_PDF.pdf%22%22">overdose death rate is five times lower than the EU average</a> – which is itself <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db356.htm">far lower than the United States’</a>. HIV infection rates among injection drug users also <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">dropped massively</a> since 2001.</p>
<p>These policies show that problem drug use is a public health challenge to be managed, not a war that can be won.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Possessing heroin, cocaine, meth and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. The idea is to get people with problem drug use help, not punishment.Scott Akins, Professor, Sociology Department, Oregon State UniversityClayton Mosher, Professor, Sociology Department, Washington State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1205582019-08-07T13:38:51Z2019-08-07T13:38:51ZFrench cannabis legalization debate ignores race, religion and the mass incarceration of Muslims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287107/original/file-20190806-84210-1dsw0i5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evidence suggests that Muslim men in France have been disproportionately arrested and jailed for cannabis-related crimes since the drug became illegal in 1970.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/francisco_osorio/4977990504/in/photolist-8zTv9u-B1k938-6afVLk-87j3TU-8pdjy4-hP7vgs-8TfWUQ-RTuk8L-286TveU-M4roSU-27PfhL8-29c9WnD-SthGRk-26rpDLS-286Nae3-Sh5Y3t-26rsHMb-M4r8jQ-Srk5bE-286V31w-4KqDVQ-6afVDi-6afVyR-7gvLPB-E1RSo-59cKgy-7CsArq-7gzA71-7Cszo9-7gzBJU-8VeEE6-StLf8R-21inHSo-dDKSHJ-Rr8diz-StnAiF-AtWitz-25uMaQt-QBavfz-2crXZ5w-225FvMS-Sh5ZXR-7kj7sT-RecthX-Sh61da-SBqZUA-SBrz7C-StnCrP-B33Fs7-27Per9T">Francisco Osorio/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer in France, dozens of “CBD cafés” suddenly opened across the country.</p>
<p>Exploiting a legal loophole originally created for hemp farmers, these pop-up businesses sold queuing customers oils, drinks and salves infused with cannabidiol, a cannabis compound <a href="https://theconversation.com/cbd-rising-star-or-popular-fad-110146">that is a faddish if unproven “cure”</a> for insomnia, anxiety and more. The French government reacted quickly and by mid-June had <a href="http://www.drogues.gouv.fr/actualites/cannabidiol-cbd-point-legislation">officially prohibited the sale of CBD</a>. The CBD cafés vanished within a month. </p>
<p>But France’s brief experiment with cannabidiol seems to have started a movement to legalize cannabis, which has been illegal since <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000321402&categorieLien=id">1970</a>. </p>
<p>On June 19, dozens of French economists, physicians and politicians published an open letter in the popular news magazine <a href="https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20190619.OBS14590/l-appel-de-70-medecins-elus-economistes-pourquoi-nous-voulons-legaliser-le-cannabis.html">L’Obs</a>, denouncing the “bankruptcy” of cannabis prohibition and imploring the nation to “Légalisons-Le!” Soon after, an economic advisory council to the French prime minister released a <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000321402">report</a> criticizing France’s drug war as a costly “French failure” and calling for cannabis legalization on financial grounds. </p>
<p>Then, in July, France’s drug safety agency <a href="https://ansm.sante.fr/S-informer/Actualite/Cannabis-a-visee-therapeutique-en-France-l-ANSM-souscrit-au-cadre-de-la-phase-experimentale-de-mise-a-disposition-propose-par-le-Comite-d-experts-Point-d-information">approved</a> the launch of medical cannabis trials in France — something physicians and activists have pushed for since 2013. </p>
<p>France’s drug policy debate largely echoes similar conversations that have lead a <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-expands-into-3-more-states-but-nationwide-legalization-still-unlikely-106512">dozen U.S. states</a> to legalize and regulate cannabis since 2014, but for one difference: France has all but ignored the <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/cory-booker-calls-marijuana-justice-biden-says-drug-criminals-shouldnt-be">link</a> between <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/legal-marijuana-made-big-promises-racial-equity-fell-short-n952376">race</a>, cannabis and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/nyregion/marijuana-legalization-african-americans.html">mass incarceration</a>.</p>
<h2>France’s hidden war on drugs</h2>
<p>Evidence suggests that cannabis prohibition over the past 50 years has disproportionately punished France’s Muslim minority. </p>
<p>About one-fifth of French prisoners were convicted for drug offenses, according to the <a href="http://www.justice.gouv.fr/art_pix/Stat_Annuaire_ministere-justice_2017_chapitre8.pdf">French Ministry of Justice</a> – a rate comparable to that of the <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html">United States</a>. Nearly all of them are men. </p>
<p>There is no demographic breakdown of this population, because the French credo of “absolute equality” among citizens has made it <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-a7416656.html">illegal since 1978 to collect</a> statistics based on race, ethnicity or religion. But sociologist <a href="http://cadis.ehess.fr/index.php?1142">Farhad Khosrokhavar</a>, who studies France’s prison system, has found that roughly half of the 69,000 people incarcerated today in France are Muslims of Arab descent.</p>
<p>Muslims make up just 9% of France’s 67 million people.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287106/original/file-20190806-84244-16wo80g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU2NTE1MjUxNywiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfMTQwMjg3NjI2OCIsImsiOiJwaG90by8xNDAyODc2MjY4L2h1Z2UuanBnIiwibSI6MSwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCJYZElldkdqWkk0V1MwWFNabTdlOGwyZ2NndUUiXQ%2Fshutterstock_1402876268.jpg&pi=33421636&m=1402876268&src=GxC2BHBfNf7nnlBX4w5Kzg-1-25">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/rap-info/i0595.asp">January 2018 study</a> commissioned by the French National Assembly, of the 117,421 arrests for drugs in France in 2010, 86% involved cannabis. Cannabis arrests are rising quickly, too. The same study reported that number of people arrested annually for “simple use” of cannabis in France increased 10-fold between 2000 and 2015, from 14,501 to 139,683.</p>
<p>Taken together, this and <a href="https://www.ofdt.fr/BDD/publications/docs/DCC2019.pdf">other data</a> suggests that up to 1 in 6 prisoners in France today may be an Arab Muslim man who used, possessed or sold cannabis. </p>
<h2>Hashish assassins</h2>
<p>The disproportionate impact of French drug laws on Muslim men is unsurprising considering that the French have long associated Muslims with cannabis – specifically hashish, a cannabis resin.</p>
<p>As I argue in my <a href="https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p245801coll10/id/490292/">doctoral dissertation</a> and forthcoming book on the history of hashish in France, the 19th-century French believed this mild drug caused insanity, violence and criminality among Muslim North Africans.</p>
<p>Writing in the early 1800s, the famed French scholar <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5656689h/f85.item.r=Sacy">Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy</a> popularized the idea that the word “assassin” derived from the Arabic word “hashish” and that both originated with a Muslim sect called the Assassins of Alamut, who operated during the Crusades. </p>
<p>First described in the 1300 Italian travelogue “<a href="https://www.wdl.org/en/item/14300/">The Travels of Marco Polo</a>,” the Assassins of Alamut were rumored to use an “intoxicating potion” to dupe devotees in Iraq and Syria into becoming assassins. Sacy believed the potion was made from hashish, citing contemporary Arabic references to the sect as the “al-Hashishiyya,” or “hashish-eaters.” </p>
<p>These assassins, Sacy argued, “were specifically raised to kill” by their leader, known as the Old Man of the Mountain. They were fed hashish to ensure “absolute resignation to the will of their leader.” </p>
<p>Though largely a fiction, Sacy’s contentions about cannabis-eating Muslim assassins <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/SHAD30010050">gained traction</a> in France, particularly in medicine. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287108/original/file-20190806-84195-1mfz8rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hashish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_medical_hashish(2).jpg">Mjpresson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dozens of mid 19th-century doctors cited Sacy’s work in their research, my research uncovered. They believed that Western pharmaceutical science could “tame” hashish – this dangerous and exotic intoxicant from the Orient – for use by physicians to treat such fearsome diseases as insanity, the plague and cholera. </p>
<p>Medical hashish, primarily in the form of tincture, <a href="https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p245801coll10/id/490272">flourished</a> in France during the 1830s and 1840s. </p>
<p>But the French soon grew disillusioned with their wonder drug. Cannabis, we now know, eases the symptoms of some diseases – but it cannot cure cholera.</p>
<p>As failed treatments mounted and many of the medical philosophies that underpinned the use of hashish became obsolete in France by the late 19th century, its use as medicine largely ended. In <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000845281&categorieLien=id">1953</a>, France made medicinal hashish illegal. </p>
<h2>Colonial reefer madness</h2>
<p>The link between hashish and violent Muslims, however, was ingrained in the national consciousness. And it influenced French public policy for decades.</p>
<p>Officials and physicians in French colonial Algeria, viewing hashish use as a cause of <a href="http://jubilotheque.upmc.fr/ead.html?id=CS_000020_020#!%7B%22content%22:%5B%22CS_000020_020_toc298%22,false,%22%22%5D%7D">insanity and violent criminality</a>, filled psychiatric hospitals across Algeria with local Muslims supposedly suffering “folie haschischique” – basically, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/re-criminalizing-cannabis-is-worse-than-1930s-reefer-madness-89821">reefer madness</a>.”</p>
<p>Such thinking also helped justify the creation of the <a href="https://www.editions-zones.fr/livres/de-l-indigenat/">Code de l’Indigènat</a> in 1875, a French law that institutionalized racism and apartheid in French North Africa by officially designating Muslims as subjects rather than citizens. </p>
<p>In the name of promoting “colonial order,” France established separate and unequal legal codes that promoted the segregation, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/1717?lang=fr">forced labor</a> and civil rights restrictions of Muslims and other Africans.</p>
<p>The stigmatizing association between Muslims, hashish and criminality persisted after the end of the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668311.001.0001/acprof-9780199668311-chapter-5">French Empire</a> in 1968. It followed North Africans who emigrated to France, who were believed to <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/french-historical-studies/article-abstract/36/3/479/9749/Colonial-Techniques-in-the-Imperial-Capital-The?redirectedFrom=fulltext">prone to violence</a> and criminality and as such subject to government surveillance, interrogations and excessive police force in France.</p>
<p>French parliamentarians seeking to criminalize cannabis in the late 1960s embraced these discriminatory views. </p>
<p>They described the nation’s growing drug problem as a “<a href="http://archives.assemblee-nationale.fr/4/cri/1969-1970-ordinaire1/015.pdf">foreign plague</a>” spread by Arab drug traffickers. One French National Assembly member even cited Sacy, reminding fellow lawmakers that cannabis had once inspired a cult of Muslim murderers called the “Hachichins.” </p>
<p>French lawmakers today probably would not use such discredited research or stigmatizing language to connect Muslims to cannabis. But the number of Muslims imprisoned for drug-related crimes suggests that this historic racism is alive and well in France. </p>
<p>If France moves to regulate legal cannabis, many doctors, pot smokers and libertarian economists will surely rejoice. But it may be French Muslims who benefit the most.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David A. Guba Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muslims make up 9% of France’s population and half of all its prisoners – many convicted on drug charges. But social justice isn’t part of the country’s growing debate on legalization.David A. Guba Jr., History Faculty, Bard CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/923052018-03-19T15:05:44Z2018-03-19T15:05:44ZTrump take note – why Singapore’s claim that the death penalty works for drug offences is fake news<p>Speaking <a href="https://www.mha.gov.sg/NewsRoom/in-parliament/parliamentary-speeches/Pages/Ministry-of-Home-Affairs-Committee-of-Supply-Debates-2018-Securing-a-Safer-Singapore-Together.aspx">before the country’s parliament</a>, Singapore’s minister for home affairs, K Shanmugam, extolled the country’s success in fighting drugs. He attributed these results to Singapore’s harsh drug laws, which include the use of capital punishment. </p>
<p>It may seem surprising to the uninitiated that Singapore has the death penalty for drug crimes. But, as the minister said: “Our penalties are severe because we want to deter such offences”. </p>
<p>Singapore is one of a tiny number of countries classified by Harm Reduction International (HRI) <a href="https://www.hri.global/files/2018/03/06/HRI-Death-Penalty-Report-2018.pdf">as “high application” states</a> in the use of capital punishment for drugs. This means that death sentences and executions are a regular part of the criminal justice system. Indeed, there have been two executions for drug offences just this month, killings which were <a href="https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2018/03/16/un-human-rights-office-condemns-execution-for-drug-related-offences-in-singapore/">condemned by UN human rights officials</a>.</p>
<p>The idea that harsh drug laws such as the death penalty are effective is one actively promoted by Singapore. And it is a belief now allegedly being <a href="https://www.todayonline.com/world/trump-keen-emulate-singapores-death-penalty-drug-traffickers-us-report">adopted by US president Donald Trump</a>. Given Trump’s notorious concern with what he considers “fake news”, it is somewhat surprising he has embraced one of the more dubious claims in global drug control – the myth that Singapore’s harsh penalties have nearly eliminated drug use and drug crime. </p>
<h2>The Singapore myth</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/drug-situation-is-under-control-why-should-we-legalise-drugs">Singapore consistently claims</a> that it has one of the lowest rates of drug use in the world. Yet the government does not publish reliable data on drug use, making this statement impossible to independently verify. </p>
<p>As far back as 2008, the reference group to the United Nations on HIV and injecting drug use <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwiA2o_QtPjZAhWKa8AKHZ9LD48QFggxMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelancet.com%2Fjournals%2Flancet%2Farticle%2FPIIS0140-6736%252808%252961311-2%2Fabstract&usg=AOvVaw2bKkyqsiRQyDsLrhopo7xZ">found</a> Singapore to be one of the only countries in Asia without reliable data on rates of drug injecting. More recently in 2016, HRI published its <a href="https://www.hri.global/files/2016/11/15/Asia.pdf">global state of harm reduction</a>, which similarly found almost no reliable data on levels of drug use in Singapore.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211009/original/file-20180319-31624-jtze2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Condemned.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gallows-on-black-background-126856856?src=2_pPjd9rvxFwEZWOdqxOag-1-18">BortN66/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Instead, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/05/singapore-policy-drugs-bay">government typically cites</a> information from the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/index.html">world drug report</a>, published annually by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). However, rather than being independently produced, this report reflects data <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/field/WDR_2017_Methodology.pdf">provided by governments</a>. </p>
<p>This practice – which I have long referred to as data laundering – puts a UN seal of legitimacy on Singaporean government data that is at best unverified, and at worst politically expedient. <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/field/WDR_2017_Methodology.pdf">UNODC admits</a> that the vast disparity in data quality and collection methods between countries “affect the reliability, quality and comparability” of the data in the report, making comparisons between countries of little value. </p>
<p>Even the Singaporean minister’s recent speech did not offer any figures on drug-related crime, sticking instead to a few emotive stories about the “dangers of drugs”. The government’s failure to provide transparent data creates huge doubts about any claims of effectiveness, and raises the question of whether their statements represent anything more than political “spin” to justify controversial drug policies.</p>
<h2>Missing data</h2>
<p>The only data Singapore does publish on drug use are figures on what it terms “drug abusers” – people who come into contact with the health or criminal justice system for drug treatment. Given that UNODC estimates the number of people who require treatment globally is <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/drug-use.html">only 10%</a> of all people who use drugs, we can see how these government figures (even if accurate) are a dramatic under-representation of levels of drug use in a country.</p>
<p>What about Singapore’s success in reducing drug-related crime? As with data on drug use, published figures on drug-related crime are neither robust nor transparent, again making such claims impossible to independently verify. The annual <a href="https://www.police.gov.sg/news-and-publications/statistics?year=2017&category=Crime%20Situation">statistical crime brief</a> published by the Singapore police force does not provide any data on drug-related offences. Nor does the <a href="https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/pdfs/cnb_annualbulletin2016-06.pdf">annual report</a> of Singapore’s central narcotics bureau – an odd omission given the bureau’s practice of regularly reporting major trafficking arrests on its <a href="https://www.cnb.gov.sg/newsandevents/news">website</a>. </p>
<p>This lack of data certainly does not reflect a lack of crime. The government admits 80% of people in prison <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-drugs/singapore-slams-calls-for-soft-approach-to-drugs-at-u-n-meeting-idUSKCN0XH2IS">are drug offenders</a>. This, coupled with the fact that Singapore has the <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=16">seventh highest rate of incarceration</a> per capita in Asia, does not mesh easily with the government’s claims of low levels of drug-related crime either.</p>
<p>Interestingly, what the narcotics bureau’s 2016 report does show is that seizures of both methamphetamine and cannabis increased by approximately 20% over the previous year, while heroin seizures remain basically level. Hardly indicators of a shrinking drug market. </p>
<p>Clearly the statistics used to promote the Singapore myth either do not exist, or fall apart under scrutiny. As a result, any attempt to use the Singapore model as evidence of the effectiveness of the death penalty for drug offences is ludicrous. Given the unprecedented <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/06/opioid-crisis-overdoses-increased-by-a-third-across-us-in-14-months-says-cdc">overdose crisis in the US</a>, Americans deserve an evidence-based response. Pursuing myth-based drug policies will only make the problem worse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rick Lines is Executive Director of Harm Reduction International.</span></em></p>Singapore claims to have nearly eliminated drug use and crime thanks to capital punishment - but the data tells a very different story.Rick Lines, Senior Research Associate, Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725062017-02-14T05:38:41Z2017-02-14T05:38:41ZFactCheck: it’s true – Western Australia has the nation’s highest rate of methamphetamine use<blockquote>
<p>We have the worst rate of methamphetamine usage in the country. – <strong>West Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan, <a href="https://thewest.com.au/politics/state-election-2017/crime-spike-gave-labor-weapon-hurt-liberals-ng-b88371752z">quoted</a> in The West Australian, February 6, 2017.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The illicit drug methamphetamine, commonly known as “speed”, “crystal meth” and “ice”, continues to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-25/adelaides-methamphetamine-use-climbs-sewage-analysis-shows/8210188">make</a> <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/tom-carroll-on-his-recovery-from-addiction-and-taking-part-in-the-new-abc-doco-ice-wars-20170202-gu4n35.html">headlines</a> in Australia as communities grapple with its <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-we-in-the-midst-of-an-ice-epidemic-a-snapshot-of-meth-use-in-australia-39697">destructive effects</a>. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://thewest.com.au/politics/state-election-2017/crime-spike-gave-labor-weapon-hurt-liberals-ng-b88371752z">news report</a> outlining the Liberal and Labor party’s strategies for tackling drug-related crime in Western Australia, state Labor leader Mark McGowan was quoted as saying “we have the worst rate of methamphetamine usage in the country”.</p>
<p>Is that right?</p>
<h2>Checking the source</h2>
<p>When asked for sources to support his statement, a spokesperson for Mark McGowan referred The Conversation to the <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129549848">2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey</a>, particularly page 11 of the report, which says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Meth/amphetamine use was higher in Western Australia (3.8%) than any other jurisdiction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The spokesperson also referred The Conversation to the state government’s <a href="https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/MediaDocuments/WA%20Meth%20Strategy%202016.pdf">Western Australian Meth Strategy 2016</a> report, which states on page seven that meth use in Western Australia is higher than the national average.</p>
<p>And the spokesperson cited Western Australia’s Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan, who was <a href="http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/wa-speaks-meth-drug-issue-voted-states-top-crime-problem/news-story/8274d9ef179070d27a93818c0c39b1eb">reported</a> as saying the state continues to have the highest methamphetamine use per capita in Australia. </p>
<p>You can read the full response from McGowan’s office <a href="http://theconversation.com/full-response-from-mark-mcgowan-72723">here</a>.</p>
<h2>Does Western Australia have the highest rate of methamphetamine use?</h2>
<p>Yes. The latest available Australian data, published in the <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/ndshs-2013/">2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey</a>, show that 3.8% of the West Australian population had used methamphetamine in the 12 months prior to the survey. That’s nearly double the Australian average of 2.1%.</p>
<p>This isn’t a recent phenomenon. The rate of methamphetamine use in Western Australia has been higher than the rest of the nation since at least the 1990s.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156711/original/image-20170214-25962-1msla1b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156688/original/image-20170213-25987-1vk4i6c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The rate of methamphetamine use across Australia has been declining since 1998 – including in Western Australia. But over that time, the rate of use in the state has remained consistently higher than the Australian average.</p>
<p>The rate of use of many other drugs, including binge drinking, cannabis and pharmaceuticals for non-medical purposes, is also <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/ndshs-2013/ch7/">higher in Western Australia</a> than the Australian average. </p>
<h2>How do we know?</h2>
<p>The data in the charts above come from the <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/about-ndshs/">National Drug Strategy Household Survey</a>. It’s a reliable data set that’s been collected every three years since the 1990s.</p>
<p>It’s the only population level data we have that shows drug use trends. That means it collects data from the general population, including people who don’t use drugs at all, not just among specific groups of people who use drugs.</p>
<p>It’s not perfect; no dataset is. The survey has been criticised because it’s likely to underestimate drug use. But it is likely to underestimate usage of all drug types in all locations and relatively consistently over time, so it can give us a good sense of trends over time and differences between states.</p>
<p>All the other reliable data available is collected among people in <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/aodts-nmds-2014-15/aodts-nmds/">treatment</a>, people in the <a href="http://aic.gov.au/about_aic/research_programs/nmp/duma.html">justice system</a>, or populations of people who <a href="https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/project/illicit-drug-reporting-system-idrs-d1">regularly use</a> drugs. The rates of use among these groups is much higher than the general population, so the data doesn’t reflect drug use in the general community.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/2016-national-drug-strategy-household-survey/">2016 National Drug Strategy Household Survey</a> is due to be released shortly. In general, drug use shows relatively small increases and decreases over time (typically less than half to one percentage point change between years), so it’s unlikely that the 2016 data will buck the long term trend too much.</p>
<h2>People are using more potent forms of methamphetamine</h2>
<p>Although the rate of methamphetamine use across Australia has stabilised at <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129549848">2.1%</a> of the population between 2010 and 2013, we have seen a major shift in the <em>type</em> of methamphetamine people are using. Western Australia has seen the <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129549643">same shift</a> as the rest of the country.</p>
<p>In 2010, most people who used methamphetamine preferred to use the less potent powder form, known as “speed”. But by 2013 around half the people surveyed preferred to use the stronger crystal form, known as “ice”. Speed and ice have the same chemical makeup, but ice is a lot stronger.</p>
<p><strong>Changes in methamphetamine use among Australian users aged 14 or older, 2007 to 2013</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156305/original/image-20170210-8655-1hmoiv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This shows the main forms of methamphetamine used by recent users (meaning within the last 12 months) aged 14 or older, 2007 to 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/ndshs-2013/ch5/#t5_4">Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The majority of people who use methamphetamine use a small amount, very occasionally, for a short period in their life, and never experience any major problems with it. Around 70% of people who used a methamphetamine in the last year used it <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129549848">fewer than 12 times</a>, and many of those used it only once or twice.</p>
<p>But for the small percentage who do experience problems, it is a drug that can cause significant <a href="https://theconversation.com/crystal-meth-harms-on-the-rise-in-australia-18190">harm</a>.</p>
<p>Even though there hasn’t been a significant increase in the number of people using methamphetamine, the shift to the stronger form means that the risks – which include <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2016/204/4/estimating-number-regular-and-dependent-methamphetamine-users-australia-2002-2014">drug dependence</a>, <a href="https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/news/methamphetamine-deaths-increase-across-australia-and-ice-use-jumps-52-cent-among-people-who">overdose</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12474/abstract">aggression</a> and <a href="https://www.promises.com/articles/abused-drugs/meth-causes-psychosis-study-finds/">mental health</a> problems – are amplified. As a result, we have seen a big increase in people who use methamphetamine regularly coming to <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2007/186/7/hospital-separations-cannabis-and-methamphetamine-related-psychotic-episodes?inline=true">hospital</a>, needing an <a href="http://apo.org.au/node/56610">ambulance</a>, seeking <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/alcohol-and-other-drugs/data-sources/aodts-nmds-2014-15/clients/age-profile/">drug treatment</a> and being <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-15/drug-data-shows-ice-arrests-nearly-double-in-five-years/6471024">arrested</a>.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>Mark McGowan’s statement is correct. Western Australia has the highest rate of methamphetamine use in Australia – and has since records of the use of this drug began. Western Australia has a higher rate of other drug use as well. <strong>– Nicole Lee</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p>This is appears to be a fair representation of the available population data. As the author notes, no data set is perfect. When you look at groups of people who regularly use drugs, the jurisdictional trends differ from general population trends.</p>
<p>In addition we’d note the heading would more accurately read “It’s true – Western Australia has the nation’s highest rate of methamphetamine use according to available population data”. <strong>– Courtney Breen and Amanda Roxburgh</strong></p>
<hr>
<p><div class="callout"> Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Lee works as a paid consultant to public, private and not for profit services to support treatment and policy implementation. She has previously been awarded grants by the state and federal government, NHMRC and other public funding bodies for alcohol and other drug research. She is a member of AOD Media Watch, a site that monitors reporting on alcohol and other drug issues in the media. Nicole was interviewed for the program.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Roxburgh receives funding from the federal government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Courtney Breen receives funding from the federal government. </span></em></p>West Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan said his state has the “worst rate of methamphetamine usage in the country”. We asked the experts to check the evidence.Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721762017-02-02T02:56:54Z2017-02-02T02:56:54ZImmigration and crime: What does the research say?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155265/original/image-20170201-29923-xq97jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People rally in New Brunswick, N.J. against President Trump's 'travel ban.'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Mel Evans</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Editor’s note:</strong> In his first week in office, President Donald Trump showed he intends to follow through on his immigration promises. A major focus of his campaign was on removing immigrants who, he said, were increasing crime in American communities.</p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-21/read-donald-trumps-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-the-republican-convention">acceptance speech</a> at the Republican National Convention, Trump named victims who were reportedly killed by undocumented immigrants and said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources…We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now as president, he has signed executive orders that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states">restrict entry</a> of immigrants from seven countries into the U.S. and authorize the construction of <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/executive-order-border-security-and-immigration-enforcement-improvements">a wall</a> along the U.S. border with Mexico. He also signed an order to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/presidential-executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united">prioritize</a> the removal of “criminal aliens” and withhold federal funding from “sanctuary cities.”</p>
<p>But, what does research say about how immigration impacts crime in U.S. communities? We turned to our experts for answers. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Across 200 metropolitan areas</h2>
<p><strong>Robert Adelman, University at Buffalo, and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama</strong></p>
<p>Research has shown virtually no support for the enduring assumption that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime. </p>
<p>Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/44548NCJRS.pdf">commissions</a> that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2012.659200">fewer crimes</a>, on average, than native-born Americans. </p>
<p>Also, large cities with substantial immigrant populations have <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2005.01.001">lower crime rates</a>, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15377938.2016.1261057?af=R">paper</a> published this year in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, we, along with our colleagues Gail Markle, Saskia Weiss and Charles Jaret, investigated the immigration-crime relationship. </p>
<p>We analyzed census data spanning four decades from 1970 to 2010 for 200 randomly selected metropolitan areas, which include center cities and surrounding suburbs. Examining data over time allowed us to assess whether the relationship between immigration and crime changed with the broader U.S. economy and the origin and number of immigrants.</p>
<p>The most striking finding from our research is that for murder, robbery, burglary and larceny, as immigration increased, crime decreased, on average, in American metropolitan areas. The only crime that immigration had no impact on was aggravated assault. These associations are strong and stable evidence that immigration does not cause crime to increase in U.S. metropolitan areas, and may even help reduce it. </p>
<p>There are a number of ideas among scholars that explain why more immigration leads to less crime. The most common <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122413491964">explanation</a> is that immigration reduces levels of crime by revitalizing urban neighborhoods, creating vibrant communities and generating economic growth.</p>
<h2>Across 20 years of data</h2>
<p><strong>Charis E. Kubrin, University of California, Irvine, and Graham Ousey, College of William and Mary</strong></p>
<p>For the last decade, we have been studying how immigration to an area impacts crime. </p>
<p>Across <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2769600/DOI_10.1525_sp.2009.56.3.447._Exploring_the_Connection_between_Immigration_and_Violent_Crime_Rates_in_U.S._Cities_1980_2000">our studies</a>, one finding remains clear: Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence, all else being equal. </p>
<p>Our research also points to the importance of city context for understanding the immigration-crime relationship. In <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5031590/Immigration_and_the_Changing_Nature_of_Homicide_in_US_Cities_1980-2010">one study</a>, for example, we found that cities with historically high immigration levels are especially likely to enjoy reduced crime rates as a result of their immigrant populations.</p>
<p>Findings from our most recent study, forthcoming in the inaugural issue of The Annual Review of Criminology, only strengthen these conclusions. </p>
<p>We conducted a meta-analysis, meaning we systematically evaluated available research on the immigration-crime relationship in neighborhoods, cities and metropolitan areas across the U.S. We examined findings from more than 50 studies published between 1994 and 2014, including studies conducted by our copanelists, Adelman and Reid.</p>
<p>Our analysis of the literature reveals that immigration has a weak crime-suppressing effect. In other words, more immigration equals less crime. </p>
<p>There were some individual studies that found that with an increase in immigration, there was an increase in crime. However, there were 2.5 times as many findings that showed immigration was actually correlated with less crime. And, the most common finding was that immigration had no impact on crime.</p>
<p>The upshot? We find no evidence to indicate that immigration leads to more crime and it may, in fact, suppress it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charis Kubrin receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham C. Ousey, Lesley Reid, and Robert M. Adelman do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our panel of experts examines whether immigration leads to more crime using data from across 200 metropolitan areas and 20 years of research.Charis Kubrin, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, IrvineGraham C. Ousey, Professor and Chair of Sociology, William & MaryLesley Reid, Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of AlabamaRobert M. Adelman, Associate Professor of Sociology, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/649122016-09-09T09:55:29Z2016-09-09T09:55:29ZMurder on the rise as South Africa fails to stem high crime rates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137077/original/image-20160908-25244-1ftrlu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa needs to urgently work out why its high rate of fatal violence is not slowing. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa struggles with very high levels of crime and violence. Take the crime statistic on murder rates. The country ranks in the top 10 worst countries that report crime statistics according to the most recent <a href="https://data.unodc.org/">data</a> from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.</p>
<p>Crime rate comparisons between countries are fraught with challenges and should be understood as broad indications rather than accurate quantitative relationships. Nevertheless, South Africa by any measure has a serious crime problem.</p>
<p>What insights can be gleaned from the latest annual crime statistics <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/services/crimestats.php">released</a> by South Africa’s police?</p>
<h2>What the numbers say</h2>
<p>To draw meaningful conclusions about longer term trends it is necessary to use rates per 100,000 people in the population. For the last few years South Africa’s police force has opted to publicise only the raw figures for the number of crimes recorded. This doesn’t <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-02-why-crime-rates-are-more-useful-than-absolute-numbers-in-tracking-changes-over-time/">account</a> for population growth over time, or differences in population sizes between regions or towns. </p>
<p>The latest numbers had this to reveal about the five key crime types that are particularly <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-to-look-for-in-south-africas-troubling-crime-statistics-64060">worth watching</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Murder rate:</strong> this has risen nationally for the fourth year in a row, from 33 per 100,000 in 2014/2015 to 34 per 100,000 last year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137056/original/image-20160908-25244-3h1gva.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More concerning than the overall high number of murders, which is <a href="https://theconversation.com/facts-show-south-africa-has-not-become-more-violent-since-democracy-62444">by no means</a> a new development, is the fact that its rate of increase has accelerated. Whereas the rise from 2013/2014 to 2014/2015 was by 2.6%, the rise from 2014/2015 to 2015/2016 was by 3.1%. This suggests that the recent increase in fatal violence is not slowing and that South Africa may be in for several more years of increase. The country urgently needs to work out why these increases are happening.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137057/original/image-20160908-25237-1yjtxn1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong>Murder rate in Cape Town:</strong> after five bad years, this may finally have turned the corner. Cape Town’s murder rate declined from 63 per 100,000 last year to 62 this year. This is a positive sign, but there is clearly a lot more work to be done. It is still at almost twice the national rate and among the highest in the <a href="http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world.html">world</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137058/original/image-20160908-25253-btpz6h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong>Aggravated robbery trends:</strong> The national rates of residential and non-
residential robbery showed no decline although the rate at which they increased was smaller than it had been in years. Following the major increases between 2005/2006 and 2008/2009, it seems that relative stability in these crimes may have been reached. Turning them to a decline looks increasingly possible. The police should take heart.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137059/original/image-20160908-25266-13cne3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong>Burglary:</strong> Recorded rates of burglary have continued their long and fairly steady decline and are now about a third lower than they were 15 years ago. This should be a comfort given how much this crime contributes to public fear. It does, however, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0341/P03412014.pdf#page=75">appear</a> that people may have become less inclined to report this crime to the police. The <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=2643&PPN=P0341&SCH=6368">upcoming</a> Victims of Crime Survey should be watched closely to see if this trend continues and to what extent it may be contributing to recorded rates of decline.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137185/original/image-20160909-13348-1yab0q5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong>Drug-related crime and illegal possession of firearms:</strong> There has been a decrease in the recorded rates of drug-related crime for the first time in more than 20 years.</p>
<p>This could be the police’s new <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2016/05/19/polices-back-to-basics-plan-yielding-good-results-acting-commissioner-says">back to basics</a> plan in action. Acting head of police Lieutenant General <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/8166">Khomotso Phahlane</a> has championed a renewed focus on policing fundamentals and areas of under-performance. This may have resulted in resources being directed away from seeking out drug-related crimes. </p>
<p>Depending on where you stand on the issue of the desirability or effectiveness of drug <a href="http://idpc.net/alerts/2016/03/south-africa-is-still-fighting-an-apartheid-like-drug-war">prohibition</a>, this may or may not seem like a good thing. </p>
<p>The rates of illegal firearm possession have also decreased slightly in the last year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137186/original/image-20160909-13356-1xdk6jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>It is important to remember that national statistics say very little about how individuals experience crime. Each neighbourhood is different, which requires individuals to do a deep dive into the <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/services/crimestats.php">crimes reported</a> at local police stations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anine Kriegler receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the David and Elaine Potter Foundation. </span></em></p>South Africa has stubbornly high rates of violent crime. More concerning, though, is that the latest crime stats suggest the recent increase in murders is not slowing - it may even continue.Anine Kriegler, Researcher and Doctoral Candidate in Criminology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/432192015-07-08T05:15:52Z2015-07-08T05:15:52ZInside the world of suburban drug dealing<p>Over the span of a few years, we interviewed 30 middle-class, suburban drug dealers in Atlanta, Georgia, hoping to gain access to the inner workings of this subculture. </p>
<p>Drug dealing has inherent dangers – you could be robbed, threatened, assaulted or arrested – and we were interested in how these suburban dealers handled the inevitable array of conflicts they encountered.</p>
<p>What we found may be surprising: in most cases of potential conflict, nothing happened.</p>
<p>For example, one teen named Adam was angry that his friend hadn’t paid him for the ounce of marijuana and two ounces of mushrooms that he’d sold him a few weeks earlier. Fed up, Adam threatened to kill the guy. </p>
<p>“You’re going to kill me over $400?” the debtor said, to which Adam replied, “Yeah, I guess not.” And that was that.</p>
<p>In another case, a dealer named Robert returned home from high school to find that someone had stolen a quarter-pound of weed from his bedroom. The following day, convinced it was one of his friends, Robert threw the friend against a locker and threatened to beat him up after school. </p>
<p>Hours later, onlookers circled to watch the fight. Fists raised, the two locked eyes. There were a couple of shoves and a sucker punch. Seconds passed. But then the tension deflated. The crowd dispersed, and Robert and his friend went their separate ways.</p>
<p>It’s widely thought that when a drug dealer is ripped off, violent retaliation is likely to follow. But what’s striking about these two examples is that they’re <em>more</em> violent than the majority of conflicts we documented for <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo19986235.html">our recent book</a> about suburban drug dealing. </p>
<p>Most of the dealers we talked to handled their problems peacefully, either by doing nothing, avoiding the individuals who slighted them or negotiating a resolution. And it seems as though the etiquette of the suburbs – one that preaches conflict avoidance, conformity and not drawing attention to oneself – is largely responsible. </p>
<h2>A contrasting code of the streets</h2>
<p>The same can’t be said of dealers from disadvantaged, inner city neighborhoods, whom we’ve also interviewed. </p>
<p>Asked what he did to someone who failed to repay a minor debt, a St Louis street dealer who goes by the name of Big Mike calmly explained that he “threw a brick in his face. He was pretty well busted up. You can’t let people get over on you, even if it’s five dollars.” </p>
<p>Like his peers, Big Mike lived by the <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Code-of-the-Street/">code of the street</a>, which maintains that no affront should go unpunished. </p>
<p>Another inner city dealer explained the code this way: “Shootouts, killings, that’s what the game is about. You mess up, you get killed.”</p>
<p>Both suburban and urban dealers have plenty of reasons to retaliate. They can’t go to the police out of fear of incriminating themselves. By not striking back, they risk coming across as soft, inviting others to take advantage of them down the road.</p>
<p>So why didn’t suburban dealers ever seek revenge?</p>
<p>One of the main reasons may be the way they’ve been raised and oriented to operate in their world. These kids’ parents, teachers and coaches taught them to abide by what we call “the code of the suburb,” which eschews violence and holds that the best way to handle conflict is to suppress it.</p>
<p>This conflict management strategy was documented by ethnographer M P Baumgartner more than a quarter-century ago in her book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Order-Suburb-Baumgartner/dp/0195069951">Moral Order of a Suburb</a>. She referred to this strategy as a “philosophy of moral minimalism…a strong conviction that conflict is a social contaminant, something to be prevented if at all possible and to be ended quickly once begun.”</p>
<h2>‘I don’t want to hurt somebody’</h2>
<p>Evidence that the dealers subscribed to this code comes not only from their actions, but also from how they explained their actions. </p>
<p>For example, Adam said that he avoided violence because “I didn’t want to hurt people.” Another dealer, Christian, reflected the general mindset among his peers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remember being eight years old and thinking, “If I get in a fight, I’m kinda screwed ‘cause I don’t want to hurt somebody.” Like I can’t imagine punching somebody in the face and hurting them… So it’s like the idea of physical violence as retribution has never been something I wanted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Instead of violence, the dealers’ typical response to victimization was to do nothing, cut off interaction with the person responsible or try to talk out a resolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87663/original/image-20150707-1306-1colkkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many suburban adolescents deal drugs to simply earn some extra cash and smoke for free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/livingwithgiants/4650214301/in/photolist-85VyGD-nycFrH-aBqp8F-nydw6z-9fSSos-bqSgJB-7rrhNi-7hEd7-cGXRmm-nNDPjN-7rrhQZ-a3Gnwe-2iAnC-5wHYSh-8JAcrH-6GfVdi-97rgHx-9cKFzC-wpCa9-o3vgqz-e2MzUC-rgXbKF-6Gx6Sk-pN6HC-kCBSag-9hs1So-bAQy2r-5BmKot-4HYMQg-bE3xJV-5A6BsA-skUZhm-6XMtMb-5K994B-dTXiqj-5RdUuu-8NY1jP-aiz55Z-7z4oBq-a54tsX-9KuXCY-5R9CND-oti9Rv-9cKxaQ-7Yuca4-6MfHVK-oangUR-vT8Nm-nQGkWT-aKWgUc">Ryan Mannie/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dealers were well-versed in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Social-Structure-Right-Revised-Edition/dp/0121028038/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0GFY6NVZTXPK46QTP4V3">benefits of peaceful conflict management</a>. Toleration allows you to move on. Avoidance distances you from further trouble. And negotiation offers you the prospect of saving face, and maybe even getting compensation. </p>
<p>This is not to deny the obvious appeal of violent retaliation, which allows you to exact vengeance while signaling “I’m not someone to cross.” But in the suburban dealers’ minds, the benefits of retaliation were almost always outweighed by its risks, the biggest of which was legal trouble. Violence brings heat. And a criminal record can cause long-term damage, making it much harder, in the future, to achieve conventional success. </p>
<p>Consider what Robert said after the fight with his friend fizzled out, which actually led to his giving up dealing for good: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What am I going to do – start fist-fighting people or knifing people or shooting people? It wasn’t worth that. I didn’t want to go to jail. I was just trying to have a good time, smoke for free and make a little money.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The benefits of wealth and privilege</h2>
<p>This highlights another key difference between suburban and urban drug dealing.</p>
<p>Compared to their urban counterparts, it was easier for the suburban dealers to give up dealing because they didn’t really need the money. Their parents were able to provide for them, so for these teens, dealing was never meant to be a career. It was just another phase on their way to becoming successful adults, which they had no intention of jeopardizing.</p>
<p>Given their desire to avoid legal trouble, why did the suburban dealers take up selling drugs in the first place? The answer is complex. </p>
<p>In part, it’s because they believed that the odds of actually catching a drug charge were low. <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/">Official data confirm this belief</a>; while adolescents from the suburbs and inner city sell and use drugs at comparable rates, inner city users and dealers are far more likely to face criminal charges. </p>
<p>Suburban dealers didn’t think the same when it came to violence; in their mind, the police in their community would never stand for that. </p>
<p>Fortunately for them, they didn’t need violence to protect themselves. They lived in a suburban environment that espouses nonviolence – a mindset that seemingly trickles all the way down to the local drug dealers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why does suburban drug dealing tend to skirt the rampant violence of inner-city drug dealing?Scott Jacques, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Georgia State UniversityRichard Wright, Chair, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/388162015-04-16T10:06:05Z2015-04-16T10:06:05ZAre cyberbullies victims as well?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78090/original/image-20150415-31666-139ffjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could cyberbullies be in need of help as well?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=arnyNSQ5_lNS1K19d3hdkg&searchterm=cyberbullying&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=266430095">Girl Image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cyberbullying or online harassment often stems from the misuse of social networking sites, and is now recognized as a serious <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4126576/">public health issue</a>. Victims of cyberbullying, when ousted online for being gay or humiliated on Twitter, could suffer severe feelings of isolation and distress. </p>
<p>It is natural to feel empathy towards a victim of cyberbullying. </p>
<p>But what about cyberbullies themselves? Should they be ousted and shamed for their actions? Or should they be helped as they may too suffer mental health problems, which are often similar to those of their victims?</p>
<p>In my pursuit to better understand this phenomenon as a health researcher, I have conducted group interviews with college students to learn about their experiences with cyberbullying. One student in particular admitted to creating a social media account using an alias and tormenting a woman who had been a bully several years ago. </p>
<p>We know that cybervictims struggle with <a href="http://www.cyberbullying.us/cyberbullying_and_self_esteem_research_fact_sheet.pdf">low self-esteem</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092006150.html">depression</a> and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13632752.2012.704316#.VSbwuo42d2A">anxiety</a>. The media has covered extreme cases of cyberbullying that have resulted in suicide, such as the case of <a href="http://www.today.com/id/29546030/ns/today-parenting_and_family/t/her-teen-committed-suicide-over-sexting/">Jessica Logan</a>, who felt so distraught when her ex-boyfriend sent her nude photos to hundreds of teenagers that she took her own life. </p>
<p>We also know that bullies may be perceived as callous.</p>
<h2>Cyberbullies may need help as well</h2>
<p>However, <a href="http://spi.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/01/0143034313479698">research</a> shows that cyberbullies may be in need of help as well. Cyberbullies struggle with higher levels of depression, stress and anxiety when compared to students not involved in such victimization. </p>
<p>In other words, they are distressed. </p>
<p>Cyberbullies may suffer from <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/6/1312">mental health issues</a> because they were likely victimized in the past, and have lingering emotional trauma. Victims may lash out and become bullies in retaliation. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78091/original/image-20150415-19648-1mze7q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cyberbullies may have been victims of cyberbullying.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=arnyNSQ5_lNS1K19d3hdkg&searchterm=cyberbullies&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=109449359">Keypad image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>In fact, students who fall into the category of victim-bullies often endure worse health outcomes. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://pulse.seattlechildrens.org/cyberbullying-linked-to-increase-in-depression-among-female-college-students/">recent study</a> of college students, both bullies and victim-bullies showed increased chances for depression. What is more, bullies were also over four times more likely to have problem alcohol behaviors. </p>
<p>Victimization is a cycle and is not easily forgotten. In my experience, I have found that “hurt people hurt people.”</p>
<h2>Cyberbullies may be victims too</h2>
<p>So, how should we handle the cyberbullies? </p>
<p>While there is some <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-12-01/opinion/chi-101201umer_briefs_1_troubled-students-policies-schools">discussion</a> about criminalizing cyberbullying, others believe that rehabilitation is a more sustainable approach. </p>
<p>While this debate will likely continue into the future, we need to start thinking about best strategies. We know that aggressive personalities can develop from exposure to childhood abuse and hostility. We should, therefore, take it upon ourselves to stop the cycle. Instead of focusing on only helping the victims, we should remember that cyberbullies may have once been a victim, too. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html">After all, only 11% of teens report cyberbullying to a parent</a> for fear of appearing immature. If victims don’t receive adequate counseling, they may take matters into their own hands and retaliate. </p>
<p>This needs to be addressed so the victims don’t become cyberbullies themselves. <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2527978">Research</a> shows cyberbullies are more likely to be involved in drug crimes and in aggressive actions. It is better to take steps early on, so as to prevent any more serious criminal action later. </p>
<p>This is not to say that cyberbullies should escape consequences, especially in extreme cases of repeated, severe harassment. There needs to be accountability when it comes to one’s behavior. </p>
<p>The way we treat cyberbullies could help send a clear message. We could choose to communicate that they are unwanted and isolate them, or we could set standards for acceptable behavior and help them achieve it. </p>
<p>Of course, we cannot minimize the seriousness of cyberbullying and how destructive it is, in the first place. But the problem of cyberbullying cannot be solved, unless we address the issues of the victimizers as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Crosslin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Should cyberbullies be isolated and shamed? Or should they be helped ? Victims of cyberbullying could take to being cyberbullies themselves.Katie Crosslin, Assistant Professor of Health Studies, Texas Woman's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.