NCJ Number
171782
Journal
Valparaiso University Law Review Volume: 31 Issue: 2 Dated: (Spring 1997) Pages: 551-564
Date Published
1997
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This paper considers the value of mounting efforts to reduce the prevalence of cocaine-dealing and heroin-dealing among adolescents, explores the forms such efforts might take, and proposes a research program designed to support the development and execution of a dealing-prevention effort.
Abstract
In addition to its effects on drug availability, retail cocaine-dealing and heroin-dealing activity by adolescents causes enormous collateral damage to the communities within which it occurs and enormous direct damage to those who engage in it. The most spectacular negative impact of dealing by adolescents is its contribution to deadly violence among them, both directly and through its impact on the acquisition and carrying of firearms. As a logical matter, there are three possible approaches to reducing the number of adolescents engaged in cocaine-dealing and heroin-dealing. One could reduce the opportunities for adolescents in those industries, either by shrinking the total volume of drugs sold or by inducing dealing entrepreneurs to prefer adults to juveniles as employees. Another approach could improve the alternatives (real or perceived) to dealing drugs. A third approach could persuade some adolescents not to engage in dealing, even while leaving opportunities and alternatives unchanged. Given the prevention of drug dealing as a policy goal, a useful first step would be to mount some research into the current attitudes of youth in drug-impacted neighborhoods, as well as of their neighbors, about dealing and dealers, to supplement the existing journalistic and ethnographic accounts. This paper lists eight issues that might be addressed in research. 16 footnotes