Volume of Cocaine Use and Violence: A Comparison between Men and Women

Abstract

This paper examines the cocaine-violence relationship among samples of male and female street drug users using volume of cocaine use as the primary independent variable. Data derive from two ethnographic studies undertaken on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Subjects were studied as both perpetrators and victims of violence. The research was guided by a tripartite conceptual model of the general relationship between drugs and violence. A number of significant differences between males and females are identified and discussed. These findings, together with those of a previous analysis of the relationship between frequency of cocaine use and violence, provide evidence of the complexity of the drugs-violence relationship in general, and cocaine-violence relationships specifically.