This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
I wonder whether, particularly for more casual readers, the footnote at the outset of the article is sufficient to avoid confusion about the authors’ argument. The allusion to John Lott’s argument (Lott 2013) that more guns translates to less crime is certainly clever. I fear, though, that it might come at the expense of clarity.
And for all the rhetoric about the inherent evils of using drugs like heroin and cocaine, the logic of aggressive efforts to enforce drug prohibition has always been largely premised on claims about the “secondary effects” of the sale and use of drugs, and few if any claims about the prospect of such effects has proven more salient than the claim that the sale and use of drugs gives rise to crimes that few of us regard as anything other than very serious—namely robbery, burglary, assault, and murder.
This assumes that the relationship between drug prices and rates of serious crime is a linear one, such that the more prices fall, the more rates of serious crime will fall. An alternative hypothesis would be that, at some point, declines in prices would cease to have an effect on rates of serious crime or that, beyond a certain, declining drug prices might even exert an upward effect on rates of serious crime.
Of course, interviews should also be carefully designed to avoid biasing responses to privilege declining drug prices as an explanation for reduced propensities towards serious crime.
The effects may not be consistent across the board, such that the interaction effect of receiving SSI and paying lower prices for drugs may play out differently for different recipients. Perhaps the result is as simple as the combination of SSI income and lower prices for drugs equating to less of a propensity to commit serious crimes for cash. Or, to spitball a bit here, SSI income, combined with lower drug prices, might make it possible for one to deal drugs, when it would not have been possible for such an individual to have done so before. And perhaps, as a result, the low-level dealer might engage in acts of violence (e.g., to collect debts) that he would not have otherwise been inclined to commit. Other possibilities abound. My main point, for now, is simply that the causal arrows may run in different directions, particularly if the potential for interaction effects are taken into account.
References
Author’s Publication. 2013. Citation to be added later after blind review is complete.
Becker, H.S. 1977. The marihuana tax act. Drugs and politics, 55–6. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Burawoy, M. 2003. Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography. American Sociological Review 6: 645–679.
Duster, T. 1970. The legislation of morality: Law, drugs, and moral judgment. New York: Free Press.
Jerolmack, C., and S. Khan. 2014. Talk is cheap ethnography and the attitudinal fallacy. Sociological Methods & Research, 0049124114523396.
Lott, J.R. 2013. More guns, less crime: Understanding crime and gun control laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Musto, D.F. 1999. The American disease: Origins of narcotic control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reinarman, C., and H.G. Levine. 1989. Crack in context: Politics and media in the making of a drug scare. Contemporary Drug Problems 16: 535.
Reinarman, C., and H. Levine. 1997. The crack attack, 18–51. Crack in America: Demon drugs and social justice.
Sampson, R.J., and J.H. Laub. 1992. Crime and deviance in the life course. Annual Review of Sociology, 18: 63–84.
Zimring, W.D.S.F.E. 2006. The great American crime decline. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rowan, M. Thank God for (others’) unanswered prayers: the failure of the drug war … cheap drugs … lower rates of serious crime … the logic adds up, but what next?. Dialect Anthropol 40, 377–384 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-016-9425-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-016-9425-6