I've never had the displeasure of being around so many drugs as when I went to prep school-- not some random private school, but a legitimately prestigious one to which future U.S. presidents and or their spawn are sent. Kids there were smuggling large quantities of narcotics in and out of the country, sometimes at the risk of death.(No, I am not exaggerating.) They were also robbing each other of said drugs. The difference is that because of the institution(s), players involved, etc., more discretion is involved in how disputes were handled. All of this scales down the further removed one gets from such environs until you reach the disproportionately poor groups, who make up the bulk of the stories that people hear, but not necessarily the bulk of "crime" were they to be policed at the same levels of the former mentioned groups.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, bullying, domestic violence are issues that affect people of 'noble birth', too. In fact, a number of kids I knew in school were acutely aware of the fact that their parents saw them as a burden or impediment to their own lives and as such, sent shipped them off to boarding school. And so, the kids drank and drugged... Fast forward to college, I know of one kid whose parents shipped off on a study abroad trip to "cure his drug addiction." Yeah, he ODed while we were on a ship in the middle of the Pacific-- though he'd scored coke, but surprise, surprise, the nice dealer he'd met while were in a SE Asian port gave him something else.

tldr: Yep, kids from poor neighborhoods often don't start out w/the same advantages as those from higher socio-economic backgrounds, but kids from the latter backgrounds often work vary hard to even the playing field by engaging in self-destructive behaviors that for some reason people like to mostly associate w/being poor. Really the only difference is that certain members of society are more willing to forgive even the worst behavior for one group while penalizing mercilessly those of the other for the most innocuous behaviors.

Ps. A pier is something one might take a walk on. A peer is a member of a cohort, class, etc., ostensibly.