BRIEFING

How a recent analysis of "drug-related" crime gets it all wrong.

THE NEWEST ENTRY IN THE PROPAGANDA war against drug policy reform is a 62-page white paper produced by Joseph Califano's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse entitled, "Legalization: Panacea or Pandora's Box?" CASA's report aims to be the definitive deconstruction of arguments for legalization, but it is full of holes.

A case study of the problems with the report is the chapter on "drug-related" crime and violence. The chapter begins with an overview of the position taken by drug war critics: "Legalization advocates contend that drug-related violence is really drug-trade-related violence. They argue that what we have today is not a drug problem, but a drug prohibition problem, that anti-drug laws spawn more violence and crime than the drugs themselves" [emphasis in original] . That is a decent summary, although few, if any, reformers argue that we have no drug problem at all. How does CASA attack the reformers' position?

Tactic #1: Ignoring alcohol and more relevant research. CASA begins by citing a study of 130 "drug-related" homicides (in New York State in 1984), noting the study's finding that about 60 percent of the murders resulted "from the psychopharmacological effects of the drug" — people killing because of their intoxication — with 20 percent related to the drug trade and 3.1 percent traced to economic incentives — murdering for money to buy drugs.

But what "drugs" were involved in these homicides? To judge by how CASA presents these figures, one would reasonably assume that the study covered illicit drugs only. Not so. The study — which was done by Paul Goldstein and Henry Brownstein and published in a book called Drugs, Crime and the Criminal Justice System— reveals the prominent role of alcohol use in these crimes.

In reporting their results, the researchers provide summaries of eight of the psychopharmacological murders. Reading them, one quickly finds barroom brawls and people drinking heavily just before committing murder. Alcohol is mentioned in seven of the eight case summaries.

If you don't account for alcohol — a legal drug long established as a major contributor to violent behavior — then the statistics do not say much about the role of illegal drugs in homicides.

CASA wanted to portray its opponents as mistaken for suggesting that the drug trade, not drug use, plays a major role in violence. But CASKs source does not refute the position taken by anti-prohibitionists. Indeed, it does not even give a good picture of the work of Goldstein and Brownstein. Ironically, the same authors later produced one of the seminal studies strengthening the case against prohibition.

That study — not cited by CASA — classified "drug-related" homicides (this time in New York City in 1988) by motives and circumstances. (See Contemporary Drug Problems, Winter 1989, and The Drug Policy Letter, March/April 1990.) The researchers found that 74 percent of "drug-related" homicides (162 out of 218) occurred as a result of the drug trade, with only 14 percent (31 homicides) traceable to psychopharmacological causes. Two out of three of these psychopharmacological murders involved alcohol use.

These results strongly indicated that the unstable black market for crack cocaine led to a rash of homicides in New York City in 1988, while the use of the drug barely registered as a cause of murder. Only five of the 218 "drug-related" homicides studied were linked to crack use, while 106 out of 162 drug-trade murders were in the crack trade.

There are two key advantages to this later Goldstein/ Brownstein study over the study cited by CASA: 1) the homicides studied occurred during the late-1980s explosion of crack in NewYork City, and 2) the conclusions more carefully differentiate among drugs and their roles in homicide; a whole section focuses on crack cocaine. The researchers concluded, "while these events [homicides] were tragedies, they are hardly the basis for claims that crack induces violent behavior."

Any way you slice it, CASA's choice of a source here is suspect. If CASA was aware of the later Goldstein/Brownstein study, but chose to cite the earlier study instead, this chapter is a shell game. If CASA was unaware of the later study, one must ask why the group purports to be expert in this matter. But, even granting such naivete, CASA's glossing over alcohol's major role in murders labeled simply "drug-related" is either sloppy or deceptive — or both.

Tactic #2: Presuming that drug use causes violence. Later in its chapter on crime and violence, CASA mentions "psychopharmacological violence, such as that caused by cocaine psychosis," and alleges that cocaine, crack, methamphetamine and PCP are "drugs closely associated with violent behavior." Here, CASA is establishing a link to a popular, though misguided, prejudice — the notion that the use of illegal drugs frequently makes people violent.

CASA notes only an association between these drugs and violence, rather than stating outright that drug use is the cause. But most readers will miss this distinction, since it comes amid speculation on the results of legalizing drugs, including "the threat of rising violence."

To support this fear, CASA notes that "past increases in the NewYork City homicide rate have been tied to increases in cocaine use." The cite is to an article in the July 6, 1994 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The JAMA article summarizes findings from a study of homicides in NewYork City in 1990 and 1991. However, the article does not say what CASA is implying — that users of cocaine were responsible for outbursts of violence. The study was about the demographics of murder victims, not the circumstances of the deaths or the motives of the killers.

The JAMA authors did comment that "it is likely that cocaine use was related to the high rates of homicide, particularly among African-Americans and Latinos." What was the association of cocaine use with homicide? The researchers could not specify. But they did speculate, offering two possibilities: that drug users provoked their killers while high, or that victims were killed as a result of the burgeoning drug trade.

In choosing to cite the JAMA article, CASA must have assumed that many of these murders were induced by drug use. Yet JAMA provides no support for that notion. CASA' s inferred cocaine-crazed killer simply would not have appeared in this study's data on victims. JAMA is an authoritative source, but CASA misrepresented this article's contents.

Moreover, CASA failed to examine the JAMA article's own citations, which include seven studies of violence in the cocaine trade. One is the 1989 Goldstein/Brownstein study that pointed to prohibition as the cause of most "drug-related" murders in New York City. Why were the JAMA writers aware of that study and others, while CASA remained blind to the research in the field?

ÇASA's prejudice is evident in this conclusion: "any decreases [after legalization] in violent acts committed because of the current high cost of drugs would be more than offset by increases in psychopharmacological violence." That is an assertion that, to be credible, would require a careful comparison of data and reasonable projections. But CASA did not do that heavy lifting, and the studies cited in this chapter do not support the group's conclusion.

Tactic #3: Devising dubious comparisons, neglecting data supporting critics. One of the most potent arguments against drug prohibition is that it creates incentives for crime on a massive scale. We have already seen CASA try to confuse the relationship of drugs and prohibition to violence by ignoring a confounding factor, alcohol, and by misrepresenting studies of "drug-related" homicides. The other major category of prohibition-driven crime is the range of offenses committed by users to get money for drugs.

This category of crimes, often called "acquisitive" or "economic-compulsive" crime, consists mainly of property crimes, since drug users want cash or items they can sell. Yet each such crime carries the risk of escalation into violence. Some research suggests that one in four property crimes is committed for drug money.

CASA makes just one attempt to diminish reformers' argument that prohibition causes much of this crime. The relevant passage: "U.S. Department ofJustice statistics reveal that six times as many homicides, four times as many assaults and almost one and a half times as many robberies are committed under the influence of drugs as are committed in order to get money to buy drugs." The cite is to a 1991 survey of state prison inmates published by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

CASA is not refuting the anti-prohibition argument, but instead is drawing attention to a comparison of dubious relevance. The right question would be: Does the high price of drugs under prohibition drive a significant amount of property crime? Boiled down, CASA's point is: Drug intoxication is a more prevalent cause of crime than the need for drug money.

The role of drug intoxication as a causal factor in crime is, again, not as clear as CASA suggests. As with the previous data on drugs and violence, CASA failed to account for alcohol in the data cited here. A closer look at the BJS survey of prison inmates reveals a familiar pattern: two out of three of the homicides and two out of three of the assaults that involved illegal drug use also involved alcohol use.

This repeated failure to acknowledge the role of alcohol in violent crimes is especially strange coming from CASA. In its other reports and programs, the group rightly takes a "big picture" view of substance abuse, consistently including the dangers and costs of alcohol and tobacco use. This white paper seems to be CASA's worst slip into the traditional blame-drugs-first posture of prohibitionists.

If drug intoxication accounts for more crimes than the need for drug money, CASA has not proved it. And CASA never tried to counter the notion that much property crime is driven by the need for drug money.
Incredibly, CASA ignored data in the same BJS report that supports this notion. On the very same page of the BJS report from which CASA pulled its data are the following facts (the first two appear in bold type):

•    "Money for drugs motivated more than a quarter of the inmates sentenced for robbery, burglary or larceny."

•    "Drug users were more likely to have committed crimes that could get them money."

•    Percentages of offenses for which the motive was money for drugs — robbery: 27 percent; burglary: 30 percent; larceny: 31 percent; drug trafficking: 25 percent.

These figures indicate that, in this country, one in four property crimes and a quarter of major drug crimes are driven by the need for drug money. If true, these facts would bolster anti-prohibition arguments. Is it any wonder CASA failed to notice or report them?