Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up news, culture, and independent journalism about psychedelics straight to your inbox.

Today’s lead story is about a new study looking at the relationship between the consumption of certain drugs and criminal behavior. But are these findings more of a statement on how our society polices drugs or the behavior specific drugs elicit? We spoke to the researcher of the study, Jesse Norris, about this. You can find the piece immediately below!

OH! Also, what are you up to on Sunday, May 31? We’re hosting a workshop on 5-MeO-DMT with Joël Brierre and Victoria Wueschner from Tandava and F.I.V.E. You really don’t want to miss it, as we’ll be discussing everything you need to know about this medicine, including major safety concerns affecting people and the space right now. RSVP to attend here!

Stay hydrated ,
Mary Carreón
Editor-in-Chief

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A new study finds that the relationship between drug use and criminal behavior varies dramatically depending on the substance…or maybe it has more to do with how we police than the drugs themselves.

A new study suggests that certain drugs correlate with criminal behavior more than others. But does this data actually say more about how we police drugs in our society rather than the drugs themselves causing criminal behavior?

This new research, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, challenges the tendency to lump all drug use into a monolithic discussion about crime. Conducted by Jesse Norris, an associate professor of criminal justice, at the State University of New York at Fredonia, the survey drew on a decade of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, analyzing over 544,000 responses from Americans collected between 2014-2023.

Most notably, Norris found that people who had consumed PCP were more than 10 times as likely to have been arrested for a violent offense. While that number is jarring on its own, Norris acknowledges the study can’t definitively establish causation. (Side note, PCP is a dissociative anesthetic in the same chemical family as ketamine, although it yields stronger and more potent effects.)

What’s more, the picture the data presents grows more complicated when we bring in the topic of race. Norris found that psilocybin use was equated to lower arrest rates — but only for white users, and not Black or minority users. He believes this is the result of over-policing of minority communities, noting that “any positive effects on behavior from psychedelics are less likely to show up in the arrest results" when those communities face disproportionate policing to begin with.

These findings arrive at a time when psychedelics are experiencing a cultural and clinical resurgence. Drug policy and collective attitudes around these substances are shifting at a rapid pace, making the question of who gets arrested (and who doesn’t) for these drugs as urgent as ever.

We spoke with Norris about what the data shows, what it can’t prove, how cannabis fits into this conversation, what the findings say about policing and race, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

We really don’t know. Because this study is “cross-sectional” — that is, it’s based on questions asked at one point in time rather than following up with the same people later— it’s not possible to draw definite conclusions about what causes what.

It’s possible that violence-prone people are simply drawn to PCP, or that PCP is popular among small groups of people involved in violence. But PCP does cause psychosis or delirium among many users. These states often feature “persecutory delusions,” or irrational beliefs that they’re about to be harmed by someone, which can lead to violence. For this reason, it’s plausible that PCP use does increase an individual’s chance of becoming violent.

It could be because of differences between psychedelics. For example, LSD has a stimulant effect, unlike most other psychedelics. Another real possibility is that mushroom use is associated with less crime simply because many people who use psilocybin are already the type of people who don’t commit crimes or who are unlikely to get arrested. I did control for education and income. But it’s possible that “residual socioeconomic confounding” — that is, differences in social status or behavior that aren’t captured by the variables in the study — explain this result, and that psilocybin doesn’t really affect whether people commit crimes.

Another possibility is that the purpose of drug use matters for its effect on behavior. If psychedelics are taken as part of a risky lifestyle involving using multiple drugs and frequent social contact with people involved in crime, then maybe they would have no effect on people’s criminal behavior (or even increase it, because psychedelics increase suggestibility). But if people take psychedelics with the intention of healing their trauma, depression, or addiction — which I’d guess is more common among mushroom users — perhaps that might help them make better choices and avoid violence or other illegal activity.

It could be due to a lower sample size. But it’s also certainly possible that the overpolicing of minority communities, which leads to arrests for things that most white people would get away with, means that any positive effects on behavior from psychedelics are less likely to show up in the arrest results. In addition, some researchers (including Sean Viña) have argued that due to the stresses of being discriminated against and related issues like poverty and lack of access to health care, the “set and setting” that minorities experience during psychedelic trips are less favorable, leading to fewer positive experiences and a lack of any measurable positive impacts. That idea is not completely consistent with my results because I did find a few positive associations between the use of certain psychedelics and a lower chance of arrest among African-Americans, Hispanics, and mixed-race individuals — just not as many associations as for white people.  A third possibility is that among white people, psychedelic use is associated with middle-class status, while that same association may not be true among minorities — perhaps psychedelic use is not correlated with economic status among minority groups. In other words, maybe psychedelics don’t reduce people’s likelihood of committing crimes, but the fact that white middle-class people prefer psilocybin means that it’s statistically associated with less crime among white people.

It could just be that cannabis is very popular among groups of people involved in crime and it has no effect on lawbreaking. That could explain these results. However, there is some research showing that cannabis negatively affects people’s ability to recognize and process emotions. Other research suggests cannabis might make people more impulsive. It’s common knowledge (and backed up by research) that cannabis makes some people paranoid, which can involve misinterpreting others’ intentions as hostile and lead to conflict. It’s possible that for some cannabis users, cannabis makes them more likely to commit crimes for these reasons. There are a lot of studies evaluating these questions. I’m not really an expert on this area, but I don’t think this issue is very well understood.

We don’t know for sure, but the data comes from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which is a very professionally-designed annual survey. Survey respondents are paid and assured about their anonymity, and the importance of accurate responses is stressed. For these reasons, I think that the respondents are generally being honest and that this produces reliable data. Like any data source, it has its limitations. People in prisons and mental hospitals are not covered by the survey, for example.

That PCP is strongly associated with committing serious violent offenses, and that the results about psychedelics’ association with crime are mixed—some psychedelics are associated with lower chances of arrest while others are associated with a higher chance of arrest.

I’d be worried that they’d think the study can draw conclusions about drugs causing crime, or translate directly into how we treat certain drug users. While it’s possible that specific drugs contribute to people committing crimes or refraining from committing crimes, we need more research to know if this is really the case.

A single birthday journey in the cold Atlanta air — with photos of his kids tucked into his beanie — handed Cesar Marin one of the most clarifying moments of his life as a father. After 25 years producing at CNN, he had mastered the art of showing up everywhere except where it mattered most. Plant medicine cracked him open, handed him a mirror, and what he saw changed how he moved through fatherhood entirely.

This Friday, former CNN producer and founder of The Summit Within, Cesar Marin, shares how psychedelics reshaped his relationship with his three kids, and why he believes plant medicine can be the catalyst that brings disconnected fathers back home.

Update your subscription here to get the full story in your inbox on Friday!

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