here is a substantial body of knowledge suggesting that the rates of adolescent experimentation with legal and illegal drugs are increasing. In the 1950's, less than half the adolescent population used drugs, while a 1989 study shows that among high school seniors, 80 percent used tobacco, over 60 percent used alcohol, and 55 percent used illegal drugs. Drug use across the nation was found to start at an earlier age (Morgan, 1995, 301).
However, a study by three academics at the University of Southern California covered a ten-year period and studied the connections between gangs, crack, and homicide in Los Angeles. They found any such connections to be so weak that they urged the police to "move away from gang specialization in narcotics enforcement." Former Harvard professor Walter Miller believes that only 10 percent of violent gang crime in Boston from 1984 to 1994 can be attributed to drug dealing or use. Two researchers in Chicago, Carolyn and Richard Block, found that only eight of the 288 gang related murders in the city be
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