Get on a GLP-1 and take a chew out of crime.
Violence throughout the US has seen a historic decline within the final two years, and criminologists are nonetheless attempting to determine why precisely.
However one examine from earlier this 12 months has provided a brand new idea: The new class of weight-loss medication like Ozempic and Wegovy might be partially accountable.
A examine by Rutgers College sociology professor Daniel Semenza explored the potential relationship between GLP-1 medicines, impulsivity and violent habits — and located there’s a sure logic to the idea.
“One attainable clarification comes from analysis suggesting that GLP-1 medicines have an effect on elements of the mind concerned in reward processing and self-regulation,” Semenza instructed The Submit.
The advantages of GLP-1s famously fade after customers cease taking them.
Semenza’s analysis in contrast present GLP-1 customers and located that widespread danger components for violence — particularly impulsivity and alcohol use — had been notably decrease in folks at the moment on the medication.
“In easy phrases, they could cut back how strongly folks reply to sure rewards or urges. Our findings counsel that somebody should still have impulsive tendencies, however these tendencies could also be much less prone to translate into violent habits,” he defined.
Semenza pointed to rising analysis suggesting GLP-1 medicine might cut back each alcohol consumption and craving by means of its results on the mind’s reward system.
“What we discovered was that alcohol use was related to extra violent habits, however that relationship was weaker amongst present GLP-1 customers in comparison with former customers,” he mentioned.
And with 15% of the grownup inhabitants reported that they’ve taken a GLP-1 — tens of thousands and thousands of Individuals may discover themselves newly restrained.
Semenza stresses that his analysis doesn’t present a direct correlation between GLP-1s and lowered violent crime nationwide, and even with straight bettering impulse management.
“However the potential connection is that impulsivity and alcohol use are well-established danger components for violence,” he mentioned.
“We discovered that these danger components had been much less strongly related to violence amongst present GLP-1 customers,” Semenza added. “So, if future analysis establishes that GLP-1 medicines really trigger that distinction, it may have implications for understanding violence prevention extra broadly.”
Analysis on the medication’ long-term results remains to be in its infancy, and subsequently, it’s too quickly to say whether or not they may cut back crime over time, Semenza defined.
“These are essential questions for future analysis. We’d like research that comply with folks over time and study what occurs earlier than, throughout, and after GLP-1 remedy,” he mentioned.
For that purpose, the secondary results of GLP-1s might be a part of a extra sophisticated image of why crime has fallen.
The US is at the moment seeing one of many steepest and most widespread crime declines in fashionable historical past, with the homicide fee falling to its lowest fee since information started, tying with 1955 and 1956.
On the similar time, the US violent crime fee plunged 9.7% in 2025, the largest annual decline for the reason that begin of nationwide estimates 90 years in the past. And it has continued to fall in 2026, based on knowledge.
Criminologists level to a normalization from COVID-era shifts, which noticed a spike in violent crime in the course of the pandemic.
Alcohol consumption, illicit drug use and firearm purchases all went up throughout 2020 and 2021, however have since receded, based on a report from Axios.
COVID lockdowns additionally disrupted most of the group guardrails and displaced notably younger males and youths.
Demographers additionally level to the shrinking variety of younger folks in America — traditionally the group most definitely to be concerned in violent crime.
Police departments nationwide are more and more utilizing extra AI instruments, predictive analytics, and platforms comparable to Palantir’s Gotham to establish crime hotspots and deploy sources.
