What are the links between drugs and crime and what can be done about drug-related crimes? Drug culture has always been a key debate within sociology and has become even more integral as drug culture increasingly increases in modern Western societies. It is estimated that in the United Kingdom and Wales over twelve million people have used some type of illicit drug and 5 million have admitted to using a class A drug. These statistics seem surprising to some and many link them to the increase in drug statistics crime in some inner-city areas where both drug use and drug-related crimes are high and increasing. However, there is the beginning of a change in attitudes towards ideas relating to the link between drugs and crime and furthermore the idea of ​​how drug crime can be reduced. Previous attitudes towards drug culture supported the idea that in most cases drugs caused crime and that prohibition would be the only way to stop it. Although more recent ideas refer to legalization, this will dramatically reduce drug-related crimes through many different processes. There are two main studies, which are extremely useful in this debate, Paul Goldstein's tripartite framework and David Matza and Gresham Sykes' drama Subterranean. The Tripartite Framework is one of the most cited research articles on drug crimes and can be argued for both prohibition and legalization, while the Underground Game focuses more on the idea of ​​legalization and how it will reduce drug-related crimes. drug. Much of the work done around the idea of ​​drugs and crime mentions Paul Goldstein's work around his tripartite framework. His work is extremely influential in this subject area for this reason alone. It also becomes very useful regarding the fact that c...... middle of paper ......d self-medicate. We finally started to look at what can be done about drug crime and came up with two schools of thought. The first stronger controls through prevention of drug use through education, stronger law enforcement and treatment, which has been proven to work with heroin use. The other school of thought, progressive decriminalization, aimed to reduce inequalities, reform international law and then decriminalize step by step. Analyzing research it appears that stronger controls on drug use will not reduce drug-related crime, as Bean has shown. The idea of ​​progressive decriminalization seems to be supported by much of the current modern research and would help stop the inequalities that lead to drug use and could stop Goldstein's idea about economic-compulsive crime and therefore would be the best idea to reduce drug-related crime..