Is Our Crime Problem an Alcohol Problem?
Take any dimension of the problem you like, except for source country violence. All illegal drugs combined are to alcohol as the Mediterranean is to the Pacific. We have our whole navy in the Mediterranean. And that’s true both of the drug policy machinery and those who are fighting the drug war, and of the drug reform movement, which, it seems to me, neglects the problem with the one drug we’ve legalized. Any sentence about drug policy that doesn’t end with “raise alcohol taxes” is an incoherent sentence.
Half the people in prison were drinking when they did whatever they did…Of the class of people who go to prison, a lot of them are drunk a lot of the time. So that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have done it if they had not been drunk. It’s just that being drunk and committing burglary are both parts of their lifestyle. Still, alcohol shortens time horizons, and people with shorter time horizons are more criminally active because they’re less scared of the punishment. Most people who drive drunk are sensible enough to know when they’re sober that they shouldn’t be driving drunk. It’s only when they’re drunk that they forget they’re not supposed to drive drunk.
Mark Kleiman interviewed by Dylan Matthews at the Ezra Klein blog.
Well, as in anything, you can’t generalize and determine a causal effect in something like alcohol causes crime. Yes, we all know that drugs and alcohol are correlated with higher crime rates. So, not quite sure what the purpose of pointing this out is…remind us that alcohol can cause violence?
I do think that alcohol is an enabler and many people are violent by nature and therefore alcohol enables those traits to come out. I’m sure other drugs do the same.
Alcohol surely causes people not to be themselves. Thus, when someone has been drinking, they are more prone to do things they wouldn’t do if they were sober. This is why most people who commit crimes are more likely to be on some kind of drug or drunk when commiting the crime.
I’m not sure I would alcohol is the reason for crimes to happen, but it certainly plays a key role on how people behave and the decisions they make.
Great pickup Dr. Goodman. America’s drug policy has been far out of line for far too long. Instead of treating many drug users as criminals, we need to treat many drug users as patients. Drug use is a pathology. Alcohol is a drug. It is just the one drug that we as a culture accept. It is far more destructive than most of the substances we imprison people for. Raising taxs on alcohol is great idea!
According to Mark Kleiman “the crime problem in the United States isn’t mostly about illegal drugs” I don’t think this is entirely true. Illegal drugs and alcohol are correlated when it comes to crime rates in this country. I would say most people who commit crimes are at some point either on drugs or drunk, if not both. The role that illegal drugs play on today’s crime rates is just as important as the role that alcohol plays in it. If you get rid of one you will still have the other one, which is just as bad. The solution is to find a solution to fight the consumption of both illegals drugs and alcohol…although, realistically speaking, I don’t know how feasible of an alternative this is.
Ethanol, caffiene and nicotene are legal. Each is a multi-billion dollar industry with large lobbies that are willing to spend big money. Each is an addictive substance. Depending on what you read, Nicotene is among the top three most addictive substances in the world that causes billions of dollars in losses every year but that’s okay. Drunk drivers kill people all the time but we still sell alcohol. A high schooler gets caught with some pot or pops some pain pills with fewer adverse affects than their legal counterparts and suddenly he is a juvenile delinquint. Something wrong here?
Here is that second link. It places nicotene as the most addictive substance in the world. http://www.michaelshouse.com/drug-addiction/most-addictive-drugs-world/
One thing Prohibition (and ditto for today’s drug policies) did is create a lucrative market for gangsters to exploit. Prohibition turned street gangs extorting nickels and dimes off area merchants in ethnic neighborhoods into wealthy, violent international criminal organizations.
Perhaps it’s not the alcohol, but rather the people, that are the problem.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. In the same way, alcohol don’t kill people, people kill people.
Um, we’ve already tried Prohibition, and on average, people drink far less now than they used to.
Assertions like this belong in the “those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it” department.