UNDERSTANDIG THE LINKS BETWEEN DRUG USE AND CRIMINALITY
UNDERSTANDIG THE LINKS BETWEEN DRUG USE AND CRIMINALITY

Summary/Abstract: Psychotropic substances are regulated by international conventions and the national laws of states worldwide. Drugs are prohibited primarily throughout these regulations. However, narcotics' use also contributes to other forms of crime in addition to the fact that they are unlawful to possess in the first place: drug trafficking, the establishment of organized criminal networks for this purpose, drug-related crimes against individuals, crimes against property, and crimes against public road traffic safety. Since the middle of the 1960s, American sociologists and criminologists have been examining the issue of drug-related criminality. The study of the criminality brought on by drug use has garnered interest over time in other societies as well, and many specialists worldwide keep investigating the dynamics of this occurrence even today. This concern is also present at the level of national and international public authorities, whose statistics and publications, which are periodically released, provide an overview of the phenomenon. The goals of the current study are to provide a better understanding of the connection between drug use and crime and to provide a comprehensive picture of drug-related offenses worldwide, in Europe and in the last ten years in Romania, using both qualitative and quantitative methods: study of specialized literature, comparison of research findings, and methodical assessment of available statistics. The results of the study highlight that drug-related crimes are a worldwide problem. In Romania, although certain fluctuations in the trends were noted in the last ten years, this issue is still present in our country. Also, it was noted that some statistics comply with explanatory models used by theoreticians.

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