Drug Market Criminology

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Moeller
Keyword(s):  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Competitive Equilibrium ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Criminological Research ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Abstract Level

There is a divide between economic and criminological research on illicit drug markets. Economists have focused on modeling markets at an abstract level, while criminologists have focused on offending in individual street-level marketplaces. This article combines the economic and criminological research on illicit drug markets through the lens of social embeddedness theory. The analysis concerns how participants reduce the uncertainties that follow from the illegality of the product, the lack of reliable information on product quality, and the trustworthiness of the trading partner. Social embeddedness theory is reconcilable with transaction cost economics but puts more emphasis on the importance of longer term interpersonal relations and trust. Using this framework provides a middle-range interpretation for the economic irregularities observed in drug markets: how prices deviate from the competitive equilibrium and how distributors develop and maintain interpersonal trust and balance competitiveness with security concerns.

scholarly journals The relationship between drug price and purity and population level harm

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catilin Hughes ◽  
Shann Hulme
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Rapid Review ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Market Impacts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Related Harm

In illicit drug markets, the price and purity of drugs change frequently. While it is well known that purity-adjusted price affects drug use, impacts on other outcomes are less clear. This rapid review examines the relationship between price, purity and seven population level measures of drug-related harm and any differences across three drug types. With a few exceptions, it found an inverse relationship between purity-adjusted price and drug-related harm, with higher purity-adjusted price associated with less drug-related harm, and lower purity-adjusted price associated with increased harm. This shows the value of price and purity data for predicting drug market impacts and the importance of improving price and purity data collection and analyses, particularly in Australia.

It’s the Same, Only It’s Not: Perceptions of the Prescription Drug Market in Comparison With Other Illicit Drug Markets

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-408
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gatewood Owens ◽  
Michelle Smirnova
Keyword(s):  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
Public Health Response ◽  
Illicit Markets ◽  
Health Response ◽  
Effective Public Health ◽  
Prescription Drug Market

Given the rapid rise of prescription (Rx) opioid overdoses in the United States, it is crucial to understand how people acquire Rx drugs. Prior research suggests individuals obtain Rx drugs through both legal and illegal channels, but there has been limited qualitative research focused upon the intersections between Rx drug markets and other drug markets. To understand the similarities and differences, we interviewed 40 incarcerated women about their experiences with both markets. Based upon these conversations, we find that few women received pills exclusively through doctors and 90% of them had used illicit markets or informal social networks to acquire Rx drugs. Although there is extensive overlap between the users, dealers, and operations between Rx and illicit drug markets, these women draw attention to how certain agents, processes, and social reactions differ in meaningful ways that are crucial to an effective public health response.

scholarly journals Coordination problems in cryptomarkets: Changes in cooperation, competition and valuation

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silje Anderdal Bakken ◽  
Kim Moeller ◽  
Sveinung Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Feedback System ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Illegal Markets ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
Conventional Drug ◽  
Present Understanding

The new drug markets emerging on the dark net have reduced earlier drug market risk factors such as visibility and violence. This study uses economic sociology and transaction cost economics to broaden the present understanding of cryptomarkets. Results focus on three coordination problems characterizing illegal markets and how they are alleviated in cryptomarkets. More information and better visibility increase competition, the feedback system enforces cooperation and border control introduces a new cost influencing valuation. Cryptomarkets are formally structured and regulated by rules of conduct and centralized decisions. We argue that the online context circumvents earlier coordination problems in illegal markets, making dark net markets more structurally efficient compared with conventional drug markets.

scholarly journals Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality?

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 302-319
Author(s):  
Andrew Childs ◽  
Ross Coomber ◽  
Melissa Bull
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Utility Maximization ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Technological Affordances

Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus, we instead conceive drug market exchanges as complex assemblages, noting how exchanges are reconstructed in online spaces, and technological affordances may facilitate elements of rationality in drug exchanges. Adopting these notions allows us to argue that aspects of rationality can potentially contribute to an understanding of exchange practices in online markets, and that online channels can afford assumptions of utility-maximization, rich market information to guide decision-making, and anonymity in the exchange. In addition, consideration is given to the structural variability of online illicit drug markets, and that the affordance of rationality should be considered across a spectrum of applicability that takes into account the specifics of each dimension of online drug market (i.e. drug cryptomarkets, illicit online pharmacies, and “app-based” drug markets).

The DUMA Drug Market Indicator Framework: methamphetamine

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Voce ◽  
Alexandra Voce
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Drug Supply ◽  
Criminal Offending ◽  
Methamphetamine Use ◽  
Indicator Framework ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Market Indicator

In this paper, we introduce the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) Drug Market Indicator Framework. We use the framework to examine Australian trends in methamphetamine supply, demand and related harms between 2013 and 2019 to provide a baseline for measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were consistent increases in the prevalence, frequency and quantity of methamphetamine use, and corresponding increases in dependence, overdose and methamphetamine-related criminal offending. A brief but substantial decrease in methamphetamine availability occurred during 2017. Despite this, the methamphetamine market quickly recovered and continued to strengthen into 2019. This paper highlights the importance of monitoring indicators relating to drug supply, demand and harm to understand the dynamics of illicit drug markets during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Auras of Detection: Power and Knowledge in Drug Prohibition

2021 ◽  
pp. 009145092110354
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Epistemic Authority ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Drug Supply ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Drug Checking

Drug checking is an evidence-based strategy for overdose prevention that continues to operate (where it operates) in a legal “gray zone” due to the legal classification of some drug checking tools as drug paraphernalia—the purview of law enforcement, not public health. This article takes the emergence of fentanyl in the U.S. drug supply as a starting point for examining two closely related questions about drug checking and drug market expertise. First, how is the epistemic authority of law enforcement over the material realities of the drug market produced? Second, in the context of that authority, what are the socio-political implications of technologically advanced drug checking instruments in the hands of people who use drugs? The expertise that people who use drugs maintain about the nature of illicit drug market and how to navigate the illicit drug supply has long been discounted as untrustworthy, irrational, or otherwise invalid. Yet, increased access to drug checking tools has the potential to afford the knowledge produced by people who use drugs a technological validity it has never before enjoyed. In this article, I engage with theories of knowledge production and ontological standpoint from the field of science, technology, and society studies to examine how law enforcement produces and maintains epistemic authority over the illicit drug market and to explore how drug checking technologies enable new forms of knowledge production. I argue that drug checking be viewed as a form of social resistance against law enforcement’s epistemological authority and as a refuge against the harms produced by drug criminalization.

Is there fentanyl contamination in the Australian illicit drug market?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Voce ◽  
Tom Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Illicit Substance ◽  
The Past

This research investigates fentanyl use among police detainees participating in the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program. Three percent of respondents tested positive to fentanyl and/or norfentanyl during urinalysis, and 11 percent reported lifetime fentanyl use. Nonprescribed fentanyl use was associated with use of and dependence on other drugs in the past 12 months. Three percent of all detainees believed they had used an illicit substance mixed with fentanyl. No detainees who tested positive to fentanyl reported using the drug in the past 12 months. These findings suggest fentanyl contamination may be occurring in the Australian illicit drug market.

scholarly journals Combatting Substandard and Counterfeit Medicines in the Nigerian Drug Market: How Industrial Pharmacists Can Rise Up to the Challenge

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Melody Okereke ◽  
Ignatius Anukwu ◽  
Sola Solarin ◽  
Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Market ◽  
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Counterfeit Medicines ◽  
Detection Technology ◽  
Monitoring And Surveillance

Substandard and counterfeit medicines (SCMs) are a major public health threat in Africa. In Nigeria, the manufacture and distribution of substandard and counterfeit medicines in the drug market are booming, despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies to crack down on criminal syndicates over the years. The current situation has been exacerbated due to factors tied to unregulated open drug markets, lack of counterfeit detection technology, poor local pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, and porous cross-border monitoring and surveillance systems. However, industrial pharmacists have a key role to play in combatting the production and circulation of SCMs in the Nigerian drug market. In this commentary, we examine the prevalence of SCMs in Nigeria and proffer feasible recommendations that industrial pharmacists can leverage to ensure its effective containment.

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