Drug Markets and Drug Dealing: Time to move on?

Taylor, Stuart and Ayres, Tammy (2022). Drug Markets and Drug Dealing: Time to move on? In: European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, 2022, Malaga, Spain.

Abstract

The focus of this paper/chapter is to move beyond the stereotypical drug dealer and the drug markets in which they operate, which perpetuates the dominant socio-legal construction of drugs that often excludes quasi-legal/legal markets and their suppliers. However, in an attempt to broaden the debate and move the focus forward, this chapter aims to examine why these markets are often neglected and excluded despite being equally, if not more harmful than their illicit contemporaries, while also considering how we as academics feed into and perpetuate these ‘normative’ parameters through our own research. As Coomber highlights in the first chapter of this book: ‘academic focus continues to be placed on stereotyped or apparently visible aspects of the drug market and the ways in which this enables homogenised and simple understanding of drug markets and ‘drug dealers’ to be perpetuated’. As such, this book alongside many others stands accused of feeding into the normative parameters of constructing global understandings of drug use, drug dealing and drug markets through a narrow, conventional lens that perpetuates and reinforces the drug apartheid.

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