Drug-related crime

Drug-related crime covers the possessing, manufacturing, and distributing of drugs classified as having a potential for abuse, such as cocaine, heroin, morphine, and amphetamines, along with the trafficking and organized-crime activity, often run by drug cartels and gangs, that surrounds the drug trade, and crimes against persons such as robbery or sexual assault connected to drug activity. Criminologists divide the category into three distinct kinds: use-related crime, resulting from intoxication or a drug effect on behavior; economic-related crime, committed to fund a drug habit, such as theft or prostitution; and system-related crime, arising from the structure of prohibition itself, including production, transportation, and sale, and the violence, such as turf wars, that accompanies illegal drug markets. The three-part distinction matters because it identifies which drug-related offenses are inherently harmful and which exist as crimes only because of prohibition policy rather than because of any harm intrinsic to the act.