The results of path analysis indicated that the strongest influences were differential association and self-esteem, which were directly related to narcotics crimes, with weaker indirect but significant influences of attachment, belief, and family drug involvement. Among the most complex challenges facing Iranian society is the problems of narcotics crimes and those who commit them. About 80,000 individuals are currently incarcerated for narcotics offenses accounting for more than half of Iran’s prison population. The main goals of this analysis were to be one of the first to examine the antecedents of drug involvement among drug offenders in an Islamic Republic and employ components of popular Western theories of crime and delinquency in doing so, thereby offering the ability to gauge the explanatory power of these theories in a distinctly non-Western culture and context. The study included differential association, social learning, social control, and self-esteem theories in a single model and examined their collective power in explaining drug involvement among incarcerated offenders in Iran. Figures, appendix and references