Assessing the Effects of Drug Use on Antisocial Behavior

Nonmedical drug taking and antisocial be havior are both complex, dynamic processes; consequently, the impact of these behaviors on each other is difficult to assess. Among the multiple factors to be considered are the pharmacological properties of the drug, the psychological characteristics of the individual, the social environment, and the various categories of antisocial behavior. Many methodological problems are inherent in research that attempts to define relationships between illicit drug use and antisocial behavior. Sampling problems are common since deviant individuals are generally not used in controlled laboratory studies, whereas field studies often are confined to inherently deviant populations such as prison inmates. Field studies are limited by lack of information about pharmacological variables as well as the difficulty in obtain ing adequate control groups. The extreme forms of antisocial behavior are not amenable to laboratory study. Thus, research on illicit drug use and assaultive or sexual crimes is usually restricted to retrospective field studies which often indicate both forms of deviance present in the same individual. A cause and effect relationship cannot be inferred from retrospective studies; both behaviors often appear to be covariants of the same developmental process.