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This paper outlines how, in many ways, the drug market is not what it is commonly assumed to be and that, as such, we need to reconceptualise how we understand both the drug market and the drug dealer. It briefly reviews the research showing that many of the core activities thought to characterise drug markets and drug dealing are unreasonably exaggerated or even essentially fallacious. It then seeks to demonstrate that the drug market doesn't even look the way it is assumed to look, in terms of its shape, structure and personnel. The issue of social supply is held up as an example of how unhelpful the current view is, particularly around cannabis and young people, and as evidence that the ‘house of cards’ that is the current conceptualisation of the drug market and the drug dealer needs reappraisal along with policy that is currently insufficiently nuanced to respond appropriately.

To expand understandings of conflict, this chapter offers a detailed assessment of how exchange is enacted within local heroin markets. Addressing drug dealing and heroin users’ buying drugs for their peers (i.e., brokering), this research expands how illegal drug markets are commonly understood. A generalized framework is presented that highlights patterns of exchange.

Findings come from a 36-month study of a demographically diverse sample of 38 heroin users in Cleveland, OH. Methods involved open-ended, semi-structured interviewing and participant observation, conducted by the author and a team of graduate students.

Instead of framing exchange as either an economic or social act, this chapter shows how trade in heroin markets is often both. Here Gudeman’s (2001) dialectic between market and community is embodied in inter-subjectivities of traders, promoting both trust and conflict. In this context, conflict is the result of perpetual ambiguity all market participants can experience.

Applying a blended notion of exchange as both social and economic offers new insight on conflict and expands its orientation beyond narratives of political economy. Here, in addition to the economics that often promote conflict, the social elements of exchange (e.g., reciprocity) are emphasized.

Research has understood conflicts in drug market operations through trader characteristics (e.g., poverty, race, class, privilege). This chapter emphasizes opportunities for conflict irrespective of individualized characteristics by outlining structural elements of exchange.

This chapter contrasts two “careers in dope” (Waldorf, 1973), one a Hispanic crack dealer and the other a White trafficker of powder cocaine. The first dealer worked openly on the street, in the urban style; the latter dealt indoors, exclusively through networks of kin and friends, the only way to sell drugs in the suburbs. This chapter seeks to establish “suburban” drug sales as a particular modality, with dynamics specific to its context.

Two in-depth case cases are examined. They are drawn from a larger set of oral interviews that explore the life histories of drug dealers, with an emphasis on how they sold marijuana and cocaine, and how and why they quit selling.

First, the suburban style of drug sales has much to do with the mitigated risks White people face as dealers. Second, suburban dealing illuminates the limits of conventional economic theory to explain drug dealing universally.

Because suburban drug deals happen among friends and kin relations they are never anonymous. Making sense of economic transactions among intimates raises a number issues fundamental to economic anthropology: the ambivalence of gifts in socialeconomic relationships, and more generally the integration of economic phenomena in social dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of poor drug users and sellers who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to identify their special needs and the unique challenges they present to disaster management.

Semi‐structured, open‐ended interviews were conducted with 119 poor, predominantly African‐American, drug users and sellers. Their stories in their own words provide a mosaic of drug‐related experiences from the period immediately preceding the storm through evacuation and reveal the motivations behind their behaviors.

Many drug users placed partying, maintaining their habits, and making money ahead of personal safety and evacuation. Drug use and sales led many not to evacuate before the storm, to use drugs in congregate shelters, to avoid shelters, to roam through flooded debris‐strewn streets, to loot stores and homes of drug dealers, and to use violence or the threat of violence to achieve their drug‐related aims.

During a disaster, many poor drug users place risks on themselves, their families, their communities and ultimately on rescue workers. The conclusion presents pragmatic and humanitarian guidelines for successfully addressing this additional challenge. The recommendations are consistent with other suggestions concerning the special needs of indigent populations.

This paper aims to research people who sell cannabis in public spaces known as “drug places” in Frankfurt, Germany. A particular focus is set to the relations of identity formation, relations to other dealers and law enforcement, taking into account the concept of “street capital” as social and cultural capital accumulated in the practice of drug dealing in public.

Nine biographically oriented qualitative interviews were conducted directly within the respective “drug places” in the inner city and the margins of the local open drug scene with exclusively male subjects. Interviews were conducted in German, audio-recorded and transcribed. Data was analysed with structured qualitative content analysis.

All respondents had some degree of migration background, ranging from German citizens up to refugees with illegal residence permit status. Social deprivation, socio-cultural conflicts with parents, combined with often early own drug use (mainly cannabis and cocaine) and stigma had contributed to a precarious existence. Experiences of criminalisation did not discourage the respondents from the continuation of their selling activity. Violence in these settings was likely but assessed in highly different ways depending on attitudes and experiences. The same is true for diverging experiences with police, however, the threat of being criminalised is always present.

As mostly independent and solitary dealers, this study researched a rarely investigated group. While these respondents have developed skills or street capital to survive in the respective setting, they are caught between unfavourable social conditions, social exclusion, violence, law enforcement and own drug use, leading to a desperate and fatalistic mindset. Somewhat paradoxically, this fatalism may be regarded as a result of keeping control over their own actions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many industries, and reports indicate that this includes the illicit drug market. Recent research suggests that the homeless are particularly vulnerable during the pandemic, and the UK Government has acted to house rough sleepers. Research is scarce regarding homeless people’s experiences of the illicit drug market. This study aims to explore homeless people’s experiences of the drug supply in the UK during COVID-19.

Eight homeless people who use illicit drugs, residing in hostels for homeless people in Southampton, participated in semi-structured one-on-one telephone-based interviews.

A thematic analysis revealed five themes: availability of drugs, presence of dealers, quality of drugs, finances and personal experiences. Participants reported varying experiences of the drug supply, with lockdown measures expressed as the main reason for reduced supplies, as users found it difficult to find dealers and generate income for purchasing drugs.

The results may lack generalisability to the wider population, such as rough sleepers and drug dealers, suggesting a need for further research into people’s experiences of the drug supply during COVID-19. Research on this topic could be more in-depth through the use of research methods that are convenient for the homeless population.

Services should invest in harm reduction services and encourage homeless people who use drugs to engage in substitution treatment. Homeless services should provide psychological support for homeless people who use drugs.

The changes in homeless people’s behaviour following the pandemic may have implications for their interactions with the rest of society (e.g. begging in town centres may reduce). These changes in behaviour may also change the way society can best support homeless people.

The results are partially consistent with other research findings about the illicit drug supply; however, they also suggest that some individuals experienced minimal change in the illicit drug supply.

In the course of the 2000s Denmark has experienced a shift in drug policy in general and of cannabis policy in particular. Danish drug policy used to be known as liberal, but is now saturated with ‘zero‐tolerance’ and ‘tough on crimes’ rhetoric. What happened, and what have the consequences been? This article describes recent changes, focusing on the closing of Pusher Street in Christiania, Copenhagen, one of northern Europe's largest open cannabis markets. This most spectacular outcome can also be seen as a conquered symbol of a former liberal ‐ and for many too lenient ‐ drug policy.

Purpose – This chapter analyses the independent U.S. film Reefer Madness, a fictional full-length feature about marijuana use and selling that has grown in cult status since it was produced in 1936. In addition, this chapter discusses a number of examples of early and contemporary illegal drug films that focus on marijuana, including a short film scene from Broken Flowers (2005).

Methodology – Drawing from critical and feminist criminology, sociology, and cultural studies, this chapter provides an analysis of fictional illegal drug films with a focus on marijuana.

Findings – The significance of a century of film representations that reinforce a link between illegal drug use, immorality, and crime is discussed. It appears that these themes are quite enduring.

Value – It is worthwhile to analyze illegal drug films, not just to explore the stigmatization of users, but to examine the social/political effects of these films, particularly the ways that certain kinds of negative images support drug regulation and its attendant policing.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the elements, developmental stages, and operational steps of an open‐air drug market intervention employed in two North Carolina communities in an effort to produce a model that can be duplicated by other law enforcement agencies.

A systematic and practitioner‐informed analysis of the steps and stages of the initiative is presented here. Law enforcement partners at the command and operational levels collectively contributed their voices to the synthesis of this model. Through purposive sampling, 13 key law enforcement stakeholders from the two police departments in North Carolina participated in semi‐structured interviews conducted by a member of the research team. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed to extract participants' perceptions and recommendations regarding the intervention.

Based on analyses of the interviews, the street‐drug elimination strategy has been synthesized into several major steps. This paper elucidates the elements, developmental stages, and operational steps of the intervention.

This paper underscores important ingredients of the intervention and presents a model for other police departments to implement. Further examination of the strategy is necessary including research on improving the intervention, clarifying the factors that moderate the strategy's effectiveness, explicating the roles and perceptions of non‐law enforcement partners and examining the continued impact of the initiative.

The paper illustrates that this intervention has shown promise in reducing drug and violent crime associated with open‐air drug markets and the research is of value to other police agencies that desire to implement this intervention.

Interviews over 120 sellers and low‐level distributors of the drug “crack” in New York City. Documents seller strategies to counter police tactics. Finds that crack sellers and distributors have developed several important strategies to limit vulnerability to arrest, but that success in avoiding arrest diminishes considerably once they are detected by police. Suggests that problem‐oriented approaches are better than crackdowns, since they permanently disrupt the environmental conditions that foster drug market sites.