Heroin Mismatch in the Motor City: Addiction, Segregation, and the Geography of Opportunity

Abstract

In this article, the authors used data from economic and ethnographic interviews with heroin users from Detroit, Michigan, as well as other sources, to illustrate the relationship between heroin users’ mobility patterns and urban and suburban environments, especially in terms of drug acquisition and the geography of opportunity. The authors found that although geographic location and social networks associated with segregation provided central city residents and African Americans with a strategic advantage over White suburbanites in locating and purchasing heroin easily and efficiently, this same segregation effectively focuses the negative externalities of heroin markets in central city neighborhoods. Finally, the authors consider how the heroin trade reflects and reproduces the segregated post-industrial landscape and discuss directions for future research about the relationship between ethnic and economic ghettos and regional drug markets.

KEYWORDS:

• economic
• ethnography
• geography
• heroin
• mobility

Acknowledgments

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH R01 DA015462) and internal funding from the University of Michigan-Dearborn supported this research study. The views of the authors do not necessarily represent those of the funding agencies. The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Jacob Napieralski in constructing the map used in Figure 2 based on data gathered by the Detroit Free Press. The authors thank Gerry Polverento for permission to use his map of homicides and drug-related deaths in Detroit.

Notes

Note. SD = Self Drive; FD = Friend Drove; WB = Walk/Bike; D = Delivered.

*Participant 009 self-identified as Biracial.

Note. SD = Self Drive; FD = Friend Drove; WB = Walk/Bike; D = Delivered; RB = Rode Bus.