Dennis, this is the sort of argument that seems marginal to me.  In the US, young black men in ghettos without jobs,
for example, may use serious drugs.  Is it because of poverty or social deprivation or inequality or lack of income or
education or work or opportunity?  Oh well.  Barbara
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Craig [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 6:00 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: drug problems and income inequalities across Europe - appeal from a statistical "innocent"

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The idea 'that drug problems may be much more of a function of inequalities within societies rather than any absolute measures of poverty' is based on a misunderstanding of the relative income hypothesis, which seeks to explain why health outcomes vary between (relatively wealthy) countries, not why some people within a country have worse health than others. There is an extremely steep social 'gradient' in drug misuse within countries which suggests that poverty and deprivation are closely associated with the more harmful forms of drug misuse. A study in Greater Glasgow, for example, found that although there were few differences between affluent and deprived areas in the proportions of young people who had tried drugs, the most deprived areas of the city had a rate of emergency hospital admission 30 times higher than the most affluent. An aggregate-level association between income inequality and drug misuse does not explain why deprived areas or individuals are more likely to suffer drug-related harm than affluent ones, and may reflect higher rates of poverty in more unequal places rather than the corrosive effects on inequality on the social fabric.

Peter