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This chapter describes what is known about drug markets, and the nature and extent of harms that arise from them. It begins with a brief theoretical discussion about the structure, prices, availability, and product quality of illegal markets. The discussion of harms distinguishes between drug production and international trafficking on the one hand, and wholesale distribution and retail marketing of drugs on the other. Each affects a specific set of communities and nations in a particular fashion.

This chapter is about supply control approaches to drug problems, a set of interventions targeting the production, distribution, and sale of illicit psychoactive substances. It begins by explaining the distinctions between law enforcement and supply control. Because supply control traditionally focuses on enforcement against producers and dealers, an analytical framework is presented that links different kinds of enforcement to different layers in the drug distribution chain described in Chapter 5. The remainder of the chapter is organized by the supply level that is targeted by an intervention: production/refining, international trafficking, high-level domestic enforcement, and retail enforcement. The final section presents an assessment of what is currently understood about the effectiveness of the different programmes.

Chapter 5 described what is known about the structure, prices, and products of illegal drug markets, and the nature and extent of harms that arise from them. This chapter describes another drug market, this one consisting of an international pharmaceutical industry that operates legally within the market economies of most countries. It begins with a historical introduction to the origins of psychoactive pharmaceuticals (also called psychopharmaceuticals interchangeably) and the ways in which they are produced and marketed. After describing how the pharmaceutical industry is organized on a global level, it suggests that, with the growth of modern medicine and particularly psychiatry, there has been a substantial growth in prescriptions for mental disorders and distress, and increased comfort with the use of such prescribed medications. This situation has had, in some countries, significant consequences for the illicit drug market. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the question: how separate are the regulated and unregulated markets? The answer is that the two worlds are not separated as much as they might at first appear.

This chapter provides an overview of how drugs are brought to market, focusing on themes important for understanding subsequent chapters. It explains how patented versus generic drugs are made, approved for sale, and marketed. It also explains how various laws may protect a drug in the marketplace; the discussion includes, but is not limited to patents. The chapter also focuses on commonalities among the laws of different countries so as to provide a basic understanding of the commercial and legal realities involved with making drugs.

In some developed countries, the patent owners' exclusive rights have been stretched by allowing them to block the marketing approval of competing pharmaceutical generic products. This creates a “linkage” between patent protection and drug approval, two separate areas of regulation with distinct objectives. This form of “linkage” has been systematically introduced in the free trade agreements signed by the US with a number of countries, often under conditions that are more stringent than those applicable in the USA itself. This chapter examines the judicially-based “linkage” implemented in the USA and Canada, and the administrative regimes generated by the referred to agreements. The implications for public health in developing countries may be significant, particularly as patents on variants of existing pharmaceuticals may be unduly used to exclude competition of low priced generic medicines.

While chapter 4 sought to explore organisational and structural properties, chapter 5 sought to provide a generic and largely descriptive account of gang activities sin relation to level of gang organisation. Chapter 6 looks to build upon structure and activity by specifically focusing upon one, and the main, type of activity in which gangs are found to operate within. This is illegal drug supply. By doing so chapter 6 adds the relevance of context to the book discussion. The chapter opens by re-examining the supply of illegal drugs into the British Isles, and more specifically the research context (i.e. Scotland). The chapter then proceeds to outline how drug supply works in relation to context and specific level of gang organisation. YSGs are found to mainly be engaged in the social supply of drugs. YCGs are found to be involved anywhere between retail-level and wholesale drug supply. OCGs are found to be involved in importation and high-end wholesaling of drugs in the county. In addition, OCGs are also found to engage in illegal-governance and thus control to varying degrees the activities of lesser gang types within drug markets.

Pharmaceutical corporations justify enormous prices and history-making profits by citing their research and development investments, but those investments are exaggerated and the companies waste billions on drug marketing and sales promotions. The current system also leads to unethical corporate behavior and compromises physician integrity.

This chapter describes the specific drug market in which the young men participated and the business model they employed (the structure and hierarchy of the market, the partnerships they formed, ethnic aspects, substances, purchase, delivery, storing, turfs, snitching, etc.). In many ways, the young men largely conformed to the descriptions of drug markets and drug dealers that exist in the scholarly literature on these topics; however, their particular cultural background differentiated them from other drug dealers in significant ways. At the same time, they created a business model based on the experiences of the older generation and placed specific emphasis on not letting themselves “get carried away.”

This chapter shows how the young men at The River set themselves up within an economy that, for all intents and purposes, runs alongside the normal white economy. It explains that the young men at The River learned how the black, illegal economy operates, and developed skills and abilities needed to survive in a marginal, despised, and denigrated corner of society. The chapter observes that The River dealers banded together to form a different, alternative community of street-culture-dominated interaction, with its own rules and norms, rewards and sanctions. It notes, however, that what The River dealers know about supply chains and finding their way in the drug market, about assessing drug quality and price setting, and about spotting plain-clothes police officers, is only relevant within the street culture. The chapter emphasises that street capital is not convertible.

Judith Weisz's story of the politics of drug risk management now turns from the national controversy over Depo-Provera to join Anne MacMurdo's story of the drug’s unapproved contraceptive use and the personal risks faced by women. The FDA’s limited authority over Upjohn's marketing practices and over physicians, mental health facilities, and family planning clinics nationwide, permitted the drug to be prescribed for contraception without the informed consent of women. Unlike Judith Weisz's story of Depo-Provera's long-term risk of cancer, Anne MacMurdo's concerns the drug's short-term side effects, such as excessive menstrual bleeding, depression, and weight gain. Her story began when an injection of the drug in 1974 was followed by a hysterectomy to stop her continuous bleeding. Shebrought a products liability suit against Upjohn, but her case was not tried until 1986, when a Florida jury awarded her $186,000, a verdict reversed on appeal by the state supreme court. Her story exposes the failure of Upjohn and physicians to manage the drug's risk, the limited access of women, often poor white women and women of color, to a legal remedy, the risk management role of courts, and the limited ability of state civil law to address the drug's short-term side effects.

This chapter discusses the characteristics of the wholesale heroin market by examining some of the major drug trafficking cases between Burma and China since the mid-1980s. It takes an in-depth look at the rise and fall of a heroin kingpin, Tan Xiaolin, and mid-level heroin traffickers, Jiang Jiatian and Yang Jufen. It examines the role of southern China in wholesale drug trafficking, especially Guangdong and its vicinity. It concludes that the Chinese high-level drug market is very similar to the high-level drug trades in the United States, the Great Britain, and Canada, but very different from those in Mexico and Colombia, especially in terms of monopoly, violence, and corruption. Drug markets in countries like the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and China, under strict enforcement, tend to be small, nonhierarchical, poorly organized, with less violence and corruption, and exist on the margins of society. In lax enforcement countries such as Mexico and Colombia, drug trafficking organizations tend to be larger, better organized, more likely to use violence and corruption. Members of these organizations “can lead very comfortable lives, publicly enjoying their wealth and circulating in high society in the company of high level politicians.”

This chapter examines the history, development, and patterns of drug production and trafficking in Burma and its border. First, it briefly discusses some of the major political and economic developments in Burma and China over the past two decades, and explains how these developments affected the drug trade in these two countries, as well as Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. It then moves on to the drug trade in Burma, focusing on the three areas that are the centers of the drug business: Shan State, Mandalay City, and Rangoon City. It gives special attention to Shan State, which borders Thailand in the south and China in the north, because of its unique geopolitical location. For Mandalay and Rangoon, the chapter focuses on the recent movement of Yunnanese (Chinese from Yunnan Province) from the border areas to these cities and how the influx of Yunnanese has brought Mandalay and Rangoon closer to drug producers and traffickers along the border areas. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the characteristics of the Burmese drug market.

This chapter explores the Camorra's presence in Spain. Since its transition to democracy in the late 1970s and its entrance into the European Union in 1986, Spain has been considered by many camorristi as an El Dorado, an accessible paradise in which to conduct criminal activities undisturbed and strike gold. This may explain why, over the last thirty years, many camorristi have made it their second home. However, there is another reason: its place in the European drugs market. From the existing evidence, it could be suggested that of the Camorra clans with links to Europe, around seventy percent have connections to Spain, where they seek to profit from its structural conditions, particularly from Spanish institutions, its legal system, and economic opportunities, especially its wholesale drugs market.

This chapter provides a narrative review of the research literature on the illegal drug business in order to explore this subterranean world of work and play and paint a picture of what the police who deal with drugs are up against. Drawing on studies of drug markets, deviant lifestyles and the informal economy, it considers who drug dealers are, what motivates them to sell drugs, how dealing enterprises are organized, and how they perceive and manage risk. The analysis reveals that drug markets are largely shaped by the actors involved in the trade, the commodities being traded, and the socio-economic and cultural context of the market setting. The chapter concludes by considering some implications for the policing of drugs.

This chapter discusses the rise of entrepreneurial traffickers (both upper-and lower-level) in the Chinese drug market. First, it examines the relationship between organized crime groups and drug trafficking and distribution. It then moves on to the social organization of the drug trade by exploring issues such as fragmented trafficking process, hierarchy and division of labor, mobility within the drug trade, and self-preservation measures. It finds that China’s heroin trade consists mostly of highly fragmented stages and mutually isolated groups of entrepreneurs. In fact, all traffickers were involved in particular segments or specific stages of the drug trade, picking up their consignment at one point and moving it to the next. There were no organizations or traffickers that operated in multiple markets or exerted influence beyond their point of delivery. This is not to say that drug trafficking is not organized or coordinated among these entrepreneurs. Careful planning and execution are fundamental to operational success; and redundancy is kept to a minimum since every task is carried out by “trusted” partners. However, such organized behavior should not be confused with the concept of a formal organization, which implies operational regularity and existential continuity.

This chapter examines women’s participation in drug trafficking and street drug dealings in Yunnan, China, to understand how women have played a role in gaining and maintaining market positions in this illicit business. Drawing on data from a survey of 297 convicted female inmates and in-depth interviews with more than a dozen active female drug dealers in the community, it proposes a niche market perspective for understanding women’s participation in this illicit enterprise. Unlike other traditional enterprises, women were not simply relegated to invisible margins, but instead were present in many levels of the drug trade. In most cases, women worked for or with male partners, but they occasionally participated independently. Perhaps the most important feature of the drug trade along the border between Yunnan and Burma that shapes women’s participation is the absence of violence.

The normalisation of drug use which came in the wake of the transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, was exacerbated by a collective ideological feeling of “freedom” and loose attitudes to drug consumption. However, as the drug markets expanded, principally across urban areas which had started to disintegrate as a consequence of deindustrialisation, addiction and HIV soared. The AIDS epidemic which thereafter followed in the 1980s was eventually curbed with the delayed introduction of drug awareness campaigns and harm reduction initiatives. Even these, however, couldn’t stop the increasing punitive approaches to dealing with high levels of urban crime. Police powers were expanded, the penal code was amended and the prisons started to fill with drug-dependent offenders. This chapter charts these shifts and provides the further foundation to the findings of the study which follow in Chapter 5.

This chapter is just one illustration of this double-mindedness that became a habit of Allen Jones's being. In the spring of 1967, the end of his first year at Taft High School, he was finding it harder than usual to concentrate on school. One dealer who made a strong impression was this brother who went by the name of Bang. He lived on Boston Road, where he had the drug market of the entire neighborhood around Morris High School under his control. One evening, when Jones was talking to a girl outside Roosevelt, he saw his boy Gerard Wakens start to trade blows with Bang. This was not something that he or anyone else from the Lester Patterson Houses could ignore. They all came to Gerard's defense. The next thing he knew they were backed up against the wall of the White Castle up the street from Roosevelt with their hands up and ready to take on all comers.