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The federal government asserted a role in fighting narcotics abuse since the early 20^th century, but it was not until the Richard Nixon administration starting in 1969 that a federal “war on drugs” became high profile. Nixon stressed drives against smuggling heroin from counties like Turkey and Mexico. His administration's efforts were marred by raids on erroneous locations by a new federal Office of Drug Law Enforcement. A successor agency called the ‘Drug Enforcement Administration’ jockeyed with the FBI for supremacy in the drug enforcement field. Drug treatment generally had lower priority when it came to funding. A scourge of “crack” cocaine spread in the mid‐1980s, causing Congress to increase penalties for drug abuse in such a way that black people who primarily used crack were punished much more severely than whites who tended to use cocaine's powder form. An effort to coordinate federal antidrug resources better resulted in the establishment of a White House director of drug control policy (“drug czar”) in 1989; the first to hold the position was former education secretary William Bennett. Drug abuse declined in the 1990s, but there was disagreement over the primary cause. Advocates credited a combination of more‐intense law enforcement, better treatment, and establishment of more than 500 “drug courts” that could ride herd on offenders. The numbers of drug abusers were creeping back up by 1999.

This chapter considers the role of the police in drug control as background to the empirical study of the rationales, patterns and priorities of specialist detective units assigned to the task of investigating drug offences and gathering evidence to support the prosecution of the persons who perpetrate them. It aims to establish the parameters of policing in the drugs field and build a theoretical foundation for explaining the policing of drugs and new directions in drug control policy and practice. By critically analysing the construction of specific drug problems over time, it also uncovers the logic behind some of the most pertinent governmental responses and questions whether they serve the needs of society or the interests of powerful groups.

This chapter pulls together some key findings in order to consider the extent to which detective practices were affected by the formal structural context of policing and explain why some behaviours and aspects of their culture were susceptible to change whereas others proved resistant and enduring. The discussion then moves on to make some recommendations for potentially workable alternatives to traditional enforcement strategies that are designed to stimulate further research and reconfigure the evolution of the policing of drugs. By applying regulatory theory to drug detective work, it is argued that one way forward is for the police to use their powers to beneficially shape drug markets according to the standards and purposes of harm reduction.

Interrogating the official organizational position on the policing of drugs, this chapter delves into the police worldview with the aim of exploring and making sense of how officers perceived the drug world and their role in it, using some of the most pertinent concepts, themes, and theories from the police culture literature to help frame the analysis. Rather than presenting a monolithic view, care has been taken to reflect the diversity of opinions that were expressed by detectives and a range of other police officers so as to bring out any cultural variations arising from idiosyncrasies and the distinct experiences and expectations associated with rank, specialism, and the external policing environment. The data presented really highlights the importance of observations, informal conversations, and interviews as methods of gaining an insight into the complex and at times contradictory reality of police values and belief systems.

This chapter provides an account of the everyday realities of the war on drugs by examining the dynamics and dilemmas of how drug investigations are planned, authorized, and carried out after a case becomes operational. Attention is given to drug warrants, covert surveillance, and test purchase operations—the tactical resolutions that were used time and again for taking care of business. It focuses on the occupational perspective and practices of detectives, how they interpreted, made sense of, and manipulated the rules of the drug game, and the ways in which they used intelligence, gathered evidence, exercised power, and defined success.

This chapter reviews the police studies literature on detectives and criminal investigations in order to provide a platform on which to consider the ethnographic exploration of those specialist detective units that focus their efforts on detecting and investigating drug offences and bringing the offenders to justice. It analyses the nature of detective work, from the origins of the police detective through to the current context of criminal investigation, attends to some of the key themes and concepts that underpin the subject matters under discussion, and begins to examine key issues associated with changing the ways in which investigations are conceived, conducted, and controlled. It also explains why police organizations set up specialist squads to deal with certain forms of criminality and pays particular attention to the special features of detective work in the field of drug control.

This chapter begins with a review of the academic literature in order to explore the police informer/handler relationship and attempts to reform the use and regulation of police informers. Particular attention is paid to the moral dilemmas and practical problems of this covert policing strategy, as well as the changes introduced by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). These changes include the establishment of authorization procedures and dedicated source units. The chapter then presents and discusses empirical findings on the role of informants in drug investigations and examines how drug detectives perceived and operated within the regulatory constraints of the police informer system.