Relations Between Substance Abuse and Crime

Substance use, like other risky behaviors, is initiated and escalates during adolescence (Colder, Campbell, Ruel, Richardson, & Flay, 2002). Indeed, the rates of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use are very low prior to about 11 years of age, and increase dramatically from eighth to 12th grades.

Children of parents with alcohol problems (COAs) are four to 10 times more likely to have clinically significant levels of alcohol problems themselves, to have earlier onset of drinking, and to progress from alcohol use to abuse more quickly (Chassin, Curran, Hussong, & Colder, 1997; Donovan, 2004). Thus, COAs are a large and critical component of the underage drinking population (Zucker, Donovan, Masten, Mattson, & Moss, 2009)

Adolescent substance use is a pressing public health and social problem in the United States. Most (62.0%) high school seniors report past year alcohol use, 36.4% report past year marijuana use, and 40.3% report past year illicit drug use (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2013b). Almost a quarter report past month binge drinking (Eaton, Kann, Kinchen, Shanklin, Flint, et al., 2012), and 90.6% agree that alcohol is easy to acquire (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2012). Marijuana also is quite accessible; 81.6% of 12th graders report that marijuana is easy to get (Johnston et al., 2012). Marijuana use is now at a 30-year high among high school seniors; one in 15 high school seniors is a daily or near-daily marijuana user (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2013a). Analyses of the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) dataset found that 44% of juvenile arrestees met criteria for substance abuse or dependence, a rate that was six times higher than that of non-arrestees (1).

The past five years have also been marked by an increase in marijuana use, with 12.5% of 8th graders, 28.8% of 10th graders, and 36.4% of 12th graders reporting use in the last year on the national 2011 MTF survey, which NIDA associates with decreases in perceived risk of harm [2]. The CDC found in their 2009 Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey (YRBSS) that 36.8% of high school students had used marijuana at some point in their life and that 20.8% had used it during the 30 days prior to the survey [3]. An emerging trend of adolescent substance use is the use of synthetic marijuana (commonly referred to as K2 or “spice”) [2, 4, 5]. Synthetic marijuana, a substance that generates parallel effects to marijuana, became popular in 2009, and in early 2011 it was temporarily banned for at least a year by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) until a permanent ban can be enacted [4, 5]. In 2011, the national reported use of synthetic marijuana within the previous year was 11.4% among high school seniors [2]

Certain developmental groups, particularly adolescents and young adults, may be particularly vulnerable to developing addictions as specific brain regions, specifically those involved in exerting behavioral control, typically mature less rapidly than do brain regions involved in promoting motivated behaviors like substance use [9, 10]. Consistent with this notion, adolescents and young adults as compared to children and older adults have high rates of addictions.

At the same time, adolescence is a period of rapid developmental change, when biological, cognitive, and psychosocial capacities are altered in the transition to adulthood (Brown et al., 2008; Moss, 2008; Spear, 2000b). Given this period of rapid change, concern has been raised that high levels of exposure to alcohol and drugs during adolescence may produce negative effects on adolescent neurobiological development and on the development of psychosocial maturity (Brown et al., 2008; Spear, 2000a; Squeglia, Jacobus, & Tapert, 2009), as well as ripple effects on multiple life-course domains (Odgers et al., 2008). According to Steinberg and Cauffman (1996) psychosocial maturity is a broad aggregate of multiple dispositions, which follow a developmental progression between adolescence and adulthood and likely affect adult outcomes.

A complementary perspective suggests that adolescent substance use may impair psychosocial maturity by affecting the development of brain structures that regulate behavioral, emotional, and cognitive processes (Clark, Thatcher, & Tapert, 2008; Moss, 2008). During adolescence, prefrontal and limbic areas, and their dopamine inputs are significantly altered (Sowell & Jernigan, 1998), and these areas are linked to decision-making and reward sensitivity (Spear, 2000a). Consistent with these findings, recent studies document that, over the course of adolescence and early adulthood, both males and females show normative growth in planning (Albert et al., 2009), preference for delayed rather than immediate rewards (Steinberg et al., 2009), attentiveness to the salience of costs (as opposed to rewards; Cauffman et al., 2010), resistance to peer influence (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007), and impulse control (Steinberg et al., 2008). However, many of the brain regions that undergo developmental change during adolescence are also affected by alcohol and drug use (Volkow & Li, 2005). Chassin, Pitts, and DeLucia (1999) found that adolescent drug use had a negative effect on later autonomy and Goudriaan, Grekin, and Sher (2007) found that heavy alcohol use in late adolescence was associated with poor behavioral decision-making performance 2 years later.

Moreover, recent data have suggested adolescent AOD use may cause alterations in the structure and function of the developing brain (Jacobus et al., 2009; Windle & Windle, 2005). In the long term, the greater the AOD use, the more likely an adolescent as an adult will experience alcohol dependence and other substance abuse, antisocial behavior, legal problems, vocational problems and unemployment, comorbid disorders, and interpersonal problems with family and friends (Danielsson, Wennberg, Tengström, & Romelsjö, 2010; Hicks, Iacono, & McGue, 2010).

One potentially fruitful avenue of inquiry is the possibility that the combined presence of delinquency and early substance misuse are capable of predicting current antisocial cognition and personality and subsequent criminality and substance misuse better than delinquency or early substance misuse alone. In other words, youths who engage in comorbid delinquency and substance misuse may be at greater risk for concurrent antisocial cognition/personality problems and subsequent criminal involvement/substance misuse than youths who only engage in crime or only misuse substances.

Cognitive Development. In terms of origins for risk factors, the effects on cognitive development represent a key component when addressing the issue of adolescent substance use. Because the brain undergoes considerable development during adolescence, this period is a time of increased vulnerability to stress and risk-seeking behaviors [13–15]. Stressful circumstances, including familial or social tensions and maltreatment, that occur during critical periods can cause increased reactivity to addictive drugs and thus heighten the potential for a substance use disorder to occur.

Given the relative immaturity in adolescents of brain regions like the prefrontal cortex involved in emotional and motivational processing including in the regulation of craving for drugs and food [66, 67], adolescents may be biologically vulnerable to engagement in addictive behaviors.

Generally, the greater the AOD use, the more likely an adolescent will demonstrate interpersonal aggression, juvenile offending, or delinquency. Moreover, studies of aggressive and delinquent youth have found that they are more likely to drink alcohol, use tobacco, and have substance use problems than are their nonaggressive and nondelinquent peers. In addition, greater substance use within delinquent populations is associated with more violent offenses and more chronic antisocial behavior (Sealock, Gottfredson, & Gallagher, 1997). Finally, alcohol use and aggression are risk factors for the three leading causes of death among teenagers—unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide; thus, there is an urgent need for effective interventions addressing both adolescent AOD use and aggression.