ABSTRACT
Author Note Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by grant R01-AA-020578 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism awarded to both authors.
The notion of a linkage between alcohol and other drugs to acts of aggression is hardly a recent phenomenon, and is even evident in historical records of ancient Greece in the fourth and fifth centuries BC (Nencini, 1997). In the mid-nineteenth century, adherents to the temperance movement in the United States advanced the argument that if alcohol makes people do and feel things differently than they would normally, then alcohol could clearly be viewed as a cause of criminal behavior (Crichtlow, 1986). This notion of alcohol and other drugs destroying self-control and promoting deviance quickly infiltrated society’s attitudes about the typical causes of aggression and violent crime and, despite the many and varied shifts in attitudes toward alcohol and substance use over time, continues to persist. Frequent news reports of murders, robberies, and other violent crimes that appear to involve substance use provide ongoing reinforcement of the notion that alcohol and substance use and violent crime are associated.
