Opinion ID: 1893409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Addiction in its Proper Context

Text: It is important to recognize at the outset that we are dealing here with heroin addiction in the context of crime. Congress has made it a crime to possess heroin, D.C. Code 1973, § 33-402, despite the recognition that narcotic drug users, the primary possessors of heroin, might from a medical viewpoint be addicted. In addition, society and its judicial system is confronted with heroin addiction in the context of other crimes, those against person, property, and community. Drug addiction is an individual medical characteristic. The degree of an individual's addiction predicts the amount of heroin required to support his or her craving for the drug. But the drug is not free and it is not cheap. Heroin is priced on the market at a level that is set by the available supply, the amount of demand and the ability of a monopolistic market structure to exact as high a price as possible for the commodity. This results, for most addicts, in a daily dollar requirement for heroin that is greater than their income if they have any. Unless the addict can afford it, he turns to the community to support his addiction. The community does not support addiction willingly. Two sources of income for the addict are available: 1) directly through street crime, or, 2) by the sale of small amounts of drugs to other addicts. It is well known that most addicts support their habits through criminal activities. [39] It is dubious, therefore, to view this purely as a victimless crime, if there is such a thing in a profound sense. In the long run the sales from addicts to addicts is self-perpetuating as older addicts service new addicts. Thus the addict who cannot support his habit through legal means contributes to the misery of the community in two distinct ways: through the commission of crimes against person or property or through perpetuation, if not enlargement, of the addict population. It is reported through statistical analysis that in New York City a 10 percent increase in the price of heroin is predicted to lead to a 3.6 percent increase in robberies, a 1.8 percent increase in burglaries, a 2.0 percent increase in larceny under $50, and a 2.5 percent increase in auto theft. G. Brown and L. Silverman, The Retail Price of Heroin: Estimation and Applications 36 (The Drug Abuse Council, Inc. 1973). [40] Moreover, predicted increases in . . . murder [5.3 percent] and aggravated assault [1.5 percent], may be attributed either. . . to increases in violence within the addict population and distribution system as a result of high prices, or to peculiarities in crime-recording. Larger numbers of murders might, in fact, be the result of an increase in robberies, burglaries, and other revenue-raising crimes, some of which lead to murder. Id. Another researcher estimates that only 3.8 percent of the money used to purchase heroin is raised through legal sources including welfare payments, while shoplifting accounts for 12 percent, burglary for 14.2 percent, pickpocket and con games for 5.2 percent, armed robbery and mugging for 1.8 percent. The bulk of income is derived from providing the community with illegal services: dealing in the drug, 46.5 percent, and prostitution, 16.5 percent. See Moore, Economics of Heroin Distribution, in 3 Policy Concerning Drug Abuse in New York State 65 (Hudson Inst., 1972). Still another researcher has noted that since 1937 observers of the criminogenic effects of opioid [heroin] use have noted the necessity to resort to crime in order to support an addiction. Tinklenberg, Drugs and Crime, in 1 Technical Papers of the Second Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse 242, 262 (1973). He also notes that there are studies indicating that when opioid [heroin] use decreases by treatment or other means, so does criminal behavior. Id.