CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
According to Fareo (2012), crime is a feature of all societies, but certain trends and patterns appear consistently at different times and places. In traditional societies, violent crimes such as murder, rape, and assault may be fairly common and often are accepted and tolerated as an unavoidable part of ordinary life. As these societies modernize and become economically developed, violent acts become increasingly unacceptable as they also become increasingly rare.
Globally, there has been a serious crimes associated with illicit drug. The relationship between drugs and crime has a long history. Drugs are not always illegal, and their sale and use does not always lead to crime. Nevertheless, drugs and crime are related to each other in at least three ways (Ukwayi and Okpa, 2018).
First, the immediate effect of drugs on the mind and body may create mental or physical states that somehow facilitate aggression or theft. Second, drugs are connected to crime when a drug user has a pressing need to consume them but lacks the necessary funds to do so; such situations may lead to predatory crimes, including burglary, robbery, or theft, among others. A third way in which drugs and crime are related is that some psychoactive substances are illegal to use, trade (buy or sell), or grow/manufacture (Ukwayi and Okpa, 2018).
Braun (2019) stated that drugs can be related to crime if they cause a mental or physical state conducive to lawbreaking, lead to a perceived need that results in the motivation to steal, or result in a decrease in access to formal mediation and a corresponding increase in predatory and retaliatory crimes.
In Nigeria, drug abuse is common among young people, especially those between the ages of 15 and 40 years old (Okpa and Ukwayi, 2017). The commonly consumed illicit drugs in Nigeria are cocaine, heroin, morphine and cannabis. Adeniyi (2016) stated that undergraduate students of Nigerian universities and secondary school students use illicit drugs. Apart from this, miscreants, popularly known as area boys are ardent criminal whose activities thrive on the consumption of illicit drugs. Similarly, prostitutes or commercial sex workers also engage in illicit drug abuse and criminal activities such as armed robbery and accomplices to crime.
Most of these drugs though not produced in Nigeria are in high demand, and the quantity in circulation is heartbreaking (Muhammad-Bande, 2015). According to UNODC (2018), Nigeria has promoted continuity in strategic instruments to respond to the evolving drug situation: from the first National Drug Control Master Plan (NDCMP) launched in 1999, through the second one for the period 2008 – 2011 (extended to 2013), to the current plan for the five year period 2015-2019. The development of the NDCMP 2015-2019 was supported by the European Union funded and UNODC implemented project “Response to drugs and related organized crime in Nigeria” after extensive consultations at the state and national level (UNODC, 2018).
While West Africa and Nigeria in particular have been a hub for cocaine trafficking, in recent years there has been a decline in the quantities of cocaine intercepted in Nigeria which has gone in parallel with a decrease in the number of reports in Europe of African countries being used as transit areas (Felix and Ukwayi ,2014).
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