ABSTRACT.The relationship of the degree of use of each of ten types of illicit drugs with each of eight types of violent criminal offenses, is reported for an African-American, inner-city, low SES, young adult study sample (N = 612). Prospective data from the time of birth was available for the statistical analyses, to provide 51 control variables on factors other than substance use which might predict to later violent behavior.Findings: Greater frequency of use of marijuana was found unexpectedly to be associated with greater likelihood to commit weapons offenses; and this association was not found for any of the other drugs, except for alcohol. Marijuana use was also found associated with commission of Attempted Homicide/Reckless Endangerment offenses. Cocaine/crack and marijuana were the only two types of drugs the frequency of use of which was found, for this sample, to be significantly related to the frequency of being involved in the selling of drugs. These findings may not apply to a middle-class African-American sample.

No abstract

This is a report on a court-adjudicated, inner-city, low SES, sample of African-American adolescent males (N = 326), to determine the degree to which their family structure (e.g., single parent vs. two-parent families) vs. the nature of the family relationships, predict to the sons' involvement in substance use/abuse and in illegal behavior.Some of the family relationship measures, but none of the family structure measures, were found to predict to substance use/abuse, illegal behavior and drug trafficking. Of 33 family relationships measures analyzed, three predicted at the .01 level of significance, to the degree of recent substance use/abuse, and two predicted to the recent frequency of drug trafficking. If the subject considered his mother to have an alcohol problem, this was found to be the strongest single predictor to the degree of the son's substance use/abuse, for this sample.

No abstract

The following Kaplan/Damphouse hypothesis was tested and cross validated: The use of marijuana either predicts to or has a greater effect on increasing the degree of violent behavior for a group that is low on delinquent behavior, than it does for a group that scores high on these behaviors. For the conventional, non-delinquent sub-group, a higher degree of significant relationship between degree of marijuana use and degree of violent behavior was found, compared to the degree of this type of relationship than was found for either cocaine/crack use, amphetamine use, or tranquilizer/sedative use. For example, for the commission of the offense of Attempted Homicide/Reckless Endangerment: for the conventional, non-delinquent group there was a highly significant relationship to the degree of marijuana use; but there was a non-significant relationship between this type of offense and the degree of use of each of the other types of drugs. Thus, this special disinhibition effect was found only for marijuana, and not for other drugs, regardless of whether they were stimulant types of drugs, or were sedative drugs.