ABSTRACT
Today most people take for granted a strong link between drugs and crime, over and above the inescapable fact that possessing or distributing many psychoactive substances is in itself a contravention of the criminal law. But this link is not nearly as strong as people assume and where there is a link it is not at all clear that one causes the other. Nonetheless, the perceived association between the use of illicit drugs and criminal behaviour has long served as a means of projecting social fears and anxieties, and for mobilising support for the prohibition of drugs and the suppression of minorities who use drugs unfamiliar to the rest of society.
