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The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the relationship between region-specific regulations of medications used in the manufacture of illegal drugs and illegal drug markets.

This paper examines a case study of the relationship between the regulation of medications containing pseudoephedrine in Czechia and neighbouring countries and the illegal drug market for methamphetamine in Czechia between 2006 and 2018. The description of this case is based on a review of the literature and a review of publicly available data sources.

The tightening of the regulation of medications containing pseudoephedrine in the Czech Republic led, in the years under study, to a gradual decrease in the number of packages sold and simultaneously to the illegal import of such medications from neighbouring countries with less strict regulations. At the same time, shifts in the drug market could be observed: the internationalisation of previously primarily domestic supply chains, the increased involvement of Vietnamese organised crime groups, the emergence of large-scale methamphetamine labs and a shift in production to countries with less strict regulations. The subsequent application of stricter controls in neighbouring countries was accompanied by further shifts in supply chains and increased imports from non-European countries.

The tightening of regulations of medications within a single country or single region might lead to significant and undesirable changes in drug markets and supply chains.

This paper provides a novel case study of the development of region-specific regulations of medications and their influence on illegal drug markets and supply chains in the Czech Republic and in the European context.

Internet use has changed the mechanics of drug dealing. Although this has spurred some initial academic interest in how markets and their users have been changing, the issue is still under-researched. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the organisation of the distribution of prescription drugs and other illegal drugs overlap in these online markets by analysing data gathered from observation of the Swedish Facebook drug market and its participants.

Data were gathered during three months of digital ethnography conducted among Swedish Facebook posters supplemented by 25 interviews with sellers (20) and buyers (5). Screenshots and interview data were coded by carrying out an NVivo-based content analysis. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics of drug types, co-occurrence with other drugs, group size and the demographic characteristics of sellers. Additionally, the interviewees’ descriptions of the marketplace and their drug dealing or buying activities were included in the analysis.

In total, 57 Swedish Facebook groups that sold illegal substances were located. The groups rarely specialised in specific drug types, but were convened around demographic factors, such as specific cities and locales. The sales of prescription drugs were part of the overall activity of groups selling other illegal drugs, but they were more often sold in separate Facebook posts, possibly by specialist sellers. Swedish Facebook sales primarily concerned alprazolam, tramadol, pregabalin and clonazepam, and were sold by both professional and amateur sellers.

This study reports findings from a Nordic comparative study on social media drug dealing, representing the first in-depth study of digitally mediated prescription drug dealing outside of cryptomarkets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the content of the strategy and assess its claims to be evidence based.

This study is a close-reading of the text with commentary on specific content and reference to wider contexts.

The strategy makes use of evidence in its sections on treatment. Much evidence, including that of the UK ACMD, is dismissed or ignored. The issue of funding in times of austerity is not considered in the strategy. The range and complexity of drug use and users are not fully considered.

The strategy can be seen as an idealised ambition with little basis in reality without funding to support its aims.

There is no consideration of the impact of macro-economic policy on the extent of drug misuse.

Other commentaries on the strategy are emerging. This paper is a more extensive consideration than has so far appeared.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the history of relevant legislation before and after the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA).

A chronological narrative of laws and reports with concluding discussion.

That UK legislators have not made use of the evidence base available to them and have favoured enforcement rather than treatment approaches. That current UK practice has exacerbated not contain the use of and harms caused by illegal drugs.

The paper does not cover all relevant documents, especially those from non-governmental sources.

The practical implications centre on the failure of consecutive governments to reflect on and review the impact of current legislation, especially on people who use drugs.

That the situations of people who use drugs are currently ignored by the government and those proven responses which save lives and reduce harm are rejected.

The paper attempts to show the historical contexts of control and dangerousness of which the MDA is one instrument.

Illegal companies remain an underexplored research avenue. Indeed, although extant literature has already discussed organizational analysis of illicit businesses from a marketing or an entrepreneurial point of view, few papers have focused on it. The purpose of this study is to explore and uncover the bureaucratic aspects of this kind of structure. To do so, this study intends to demonstrate that even the most hidden organizations in a given society are shaped by common representations orienting them toward well-disseminated models.

An ethno-sociological study was conducted, thanks to a long non-participant immersion (over one year) by observing a drug-dealing organization in a French suburban area located near Paris.

This study illustrates that illicit organizations reproduce traditional organizational schemes that help them to ensure efficiency and sustainability. Indeed, they fit into modern bureaucratic models within which procedures remain highly normative and formal, but also within which interactions between members are both constrained by a regulative framework and, at the same time, enable a certain amount of autonomy and creativity at work.

The business case in this study analyzes the implications of seeing illicit businesses as organizations like any others. The counterintuitive results show that these organizations set and normalize processes allowing the establishment of a formal hierarchy, and specific yet strict rules.

The originality of this paper comes from its unit of analysis and specific subject.

This pathway paper offers research guidance for investigating illegal supply chains as they increasingly threaten societies, economies and ecosystems. There are implications for policy makers to consider incorporating supply chain expertise.

The authors’ work is informed by the team's previous and ongoing studies, research from fields such as criminology, investigative journalism and legal documents.

Illegality occurs in many supply chains and consists in multiple forms. Certain sectors, supply chain innovations, longer supply chains, and heterogeneous regulations and enforcement exacerbate illegal activities. But illegal activity may be necessary for humanitarian, religious or nationalistic reasons. These areas are under explored by supply chain researchers.

By encouraging supply chain academics to research in this area as well as form collaborative partnerships outside of the discipline, the authors hope to move the field forward in prevention as well as learning from illegal supply chains.

Practitioners seek to prevent issues like counterfeiting with their products as well as fraud for economic and reputational reasons.

Governments strive to minimise impacts on their economies and people, and both governments and NGOs attempt to minimise the negative social and environmental impacts. Policy makers need supply chain researchers to evaluate new laws to prevent enabling illegality in supply chains.

As an under-explored area, the authors suggest pathways such as partnering with other disciplines, exploring why these supply chains occur, considering other data sources and methodologies to interdict illegality and learning from illegal supply chains to improve legal supply chains.

Recent advice suggests that single‐level, single‐strand interventions are less effective in preventing or reducing harm from drug misuse than multi‐level multi‐agency approaches. Part 1 described one aspect of a community focused initiative in drug education. The overall aim of the initiative was to support and train key adults within the community to implement locally relevant schemes of work and drug‐related policies. In the previous paper, we described the training offered to parents, school staff and governors in communities in Essex. This second paper reviews both the guidelines for effective teaching and learning in drug education and the importance of effective teacher education. We describe an action research approach to in‐service training for health education coordinators which led to the development of a minimum entitlement curriculum for three different communities within the same county. We offer this combination of research, training and development as a new approach to drug education.

Continuing our look at drug policy and crime, we ask just how damaging our current drug laws are? With the ever increasing and expensive fight to stop drug use by force, are we causing more harm than good, and who is paying the price? Henry Shaftoe explains why prohibition is not only dangerous but it may also be responsible for encouraging drug use among the young.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the views of Bulgarian citizens about the relevance of lifestyles in the management of scarce resources through rationing and explore whether they are associated with participants’ characteristics.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 322 Bulgarian respondents. Respondents faced a hypothetical rationing scenario where they have to decide whether information about five harmful health behaviours (smoking, excess alcohol consumption, illegal drug use, overeating/poor diet and engaging in dangerous driving (speeding and/or under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs)) should be relevant in priority setting decisions. Descriptive statistics and logistic regressions were performed.

The majority of respondents disagree with the idea that personal responsibility for illness should count in priority decisions. Notwithstanding, there seems to be a wider consensus in giving lower priorities to patients that engage in dangerous driving (excess of speed and/or under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs), illegal drugs use and excessive alcohol intake. Overeating/poor quality nutrition was the risky behaviour less condemned by respondents followed by smoking. Respondents’ sociodemographic, health and beliefs about rationing criteria had different impact in the penalization of the risk behaviours.

This study is the first attempt to awaken attention to the impact that personal responsibility for health may have on intergenerational access to healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the hidden social worlds of competent clandestine users of drugs controlled within the confines of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which now includes NPS substances. The authors explore how and in what way socially competent drug users differ from others who are visible to the authorities as criminals by criminal justice bureaucracies and known to treatment agencies as defined problem drug users.

This qualitative research utilises a bricoleur ethnographic methodology considered as a critical, multi-perspectival, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approach to inquiry.

This paper challenges addiction discourses and, drawing upon empirical evidence, argues the user of controlled drugs should not be homogenised. Using several key strategies of identity management, drug takers employ a range of risk awareness and risk neutralisation techniques to protect self-esteem, avoid social affronts and in maintaining untainted identities. The authors present illicit drug use as one activity amongst other social activities that (some) people, conventionally, pursue. The findings from this study suggest that punitive drug policy, which links drug use with addiction, crime and antisocial behaviour, is inconsistent with the experience of the participants.

Due to the small sample size (n=24) employed, the possibility that findings can be generalised is rendered difficult. However, generalisation was never an objective of the research; the experiences of this hidden population are deeply subjective and generalising findings and applying them to other populations would be an unproductive endeavour. While the research attempted to recruit an equal number of males and females to this research, gendered analysis was not a primary objective of this research. However, it is acknowledged that future research would greatly benefit from such a gendered focus.

The insights from the study may be useful in helping to inform future policy discourse on issues of drug use. In particular, the insights suggest that a more nuanced perspective should be adopted. This perspective should recognise the non-deviant identities of many drug users in the contemporary era, and challenge the use of a universally stigmatising discourse and dominance of prohibition narratives.

It is envisaged that this paper will contribute to knowledge on how socially competent users of controlled drugs identify and manage the risks of moral, medical and legal censure.

The evidence in this paper indicates that drug use is an activity often associated with non-deviant, productive members of the population. However, the continuing dominance of stigmatising policy discourses often leads to drug users engaging in identity concealment within the context of a deeply capitalist Western landscape.