Market Testing and Market Policing: Illuminating the Fluid micro-Sociology of the Illegal Drug Supply Enterprise in Liquid Modernity

ABSTRACT

Understanding Scotland’s illegal drug market continues to challenge social scientists. Most evidently neglected are processes related to social supply, from supplier perspectives. When analyzing illegal drug markets, demand-based approaches, customarily sourcing drug users, grossly overlook supplier perspectives. Thus, a qualitative research inquiry interviewing former drug dealers facilitated exploration of a supply-based approach that detailed processes of supply in relation to market level. Situating the findings within the disruptive lens of Chatwin and Potters’ (2014) concept of extending drug use normalization to embrace a dimension of market fluidity to drug supply dealing in Scotland, the researchers interviewed 35 former drug suppliers, learning about drug distribution behavioral patterns. Retail-level dealerships and higher market echelons exemplified an embodiment of the complexity of this social world. Any model aimed at characterizing Scotland’s illegal drugs market must acknowledge and incorporate aspects of social supply (e.g., recreational drugs) and recognize the fluid nature of “normalization,” taking account into its tacit embeddedness in a “local economy” with its own history and distinctive cultural geography. Unless the nuances of these various social formations are acknowledged, the potential of national policing strategies to address the crimes connected with drugs will go unrealized due to their conceptual and pragmatic inadequacies. It is ironic that a commitment to a generalized drug market conception of official enforcement is likely to sow the seeds for an unnecessary criminalization of minor serendipitous offenders and encourage reoffending patterns.

Disclosure statement

This paper has not been published elsewhere, nor do the authors have a conflict of interest. Nor has it been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

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Notes on contributors

Robert Mclean

ROBERT MCLEAN is a final year PhD student within the Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing and Social Justice within the University of the West of Scotland. His doctorate focusses upon gang organization as a means for gang business in a Scottish context. Other areas of research interest include: drug supply markets, organized crime, and youth violence.

Chris Holligan

CHRIS HOLLIGAN is a professor within the Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing and Social Justice within the University of the West of Scotland. His recent research has been on the criminal mug shot and stigmatization; the lives of convicts in Peterhead’s Convict Prison and their letters to family; and the violent code of the street in Scotland.

Iain McPhee

IAIN MCPHEE is a senior lecturer in postgraduate alcohol and drug studies at the University of the West of Scotland. His research interests include: non-treatment seeking drug users, new and emerging psychoactive substances, street drugs and illicit drug consumption; understanding folk pharmacology.