The Unusual Suspects

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717745583
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Mike Salinas
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Unusual Suspects:

An Educated, Legitimately

Employed Drug Dealing

Network

Mike Salinas

1

Abstract

This article challenges the mainstream discourse that is often used to conceptualize illegal drug

supply. In particular, it questions the assumption that drug dealers and the markets they inhabit are a

social aberration, restricted primarily to social outsiders operating in socially and economically

marginalized communities. Drawing on 6 years of ethnographic fieldwork with 25 “conventional”

working-class “lads,” the article makes two overarching arguments. First, that the illegal drug trade is

by no means confined to a subset of violent or marginalized drug distributors. Second, that the

organization and structure of drug distribution networks can often be entwined into the fabric of

conventional routines. The article concludes that criminological research must move toward better

conceptualizing the so-called silent majority of drug dealers if we are to accurately reframe the

current reductionist drugs discourse.

Keywords

drug supply, drug dealing, drug trafficking, ethnography, criminal stereotypes

The illicit drug trade is big business. At an estimated US$320 billion annually (United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2005), the illicit drug economy accounts for between 0.6%

and 0.9%of global gross domestic product (UNODC, 2011) and boasts revenues akin to those of

Microsoft, Apple, Starbucks and the entire global film box office combined (based on gross revenues

posted for 2014). With a quarter-billion people (5.2%of the world’s population) estimated to have

consumed an illegal drug at least once in the preceding year (UNODC, 2015), it is also an economy

that caters to a sizable consumer base. Yet despite its scale, Antonopoulos & Papanicolaou (2010, p.

3) note, “there is still dire need for research on the realities of drug markets as a whole, especially

from within grounds that somehow elude the attention of mainstream drug discourses.” This article

addresses this concern and challenges the dominant “reductionist drugs discourse” (S. Taylor, 2016),

which positions those who consume, procure, or trade illegal drugs away from – and indeed in

1

Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

Mike Salinas, Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BH, United Kingdom.

Email: m.salinas@mmu.ac.uk

International CriminalJustice Review

2018, Vol. 28(3) 226-242

ª2017 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567717745583

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opposition to – mainstream society and values. The article draws upon 6 years of ethnographic

fieldwork to explore the characteristics and operational realities of 25 drug dealers and traffickers

who successfully operated at multiple levels of various supply chains in tandem with overarching

conventional (legitimate) endeavors.

It is the article’s contention that the illegal drug trade is by no means a social aberration confined

to a particular subset of “usual suspects” existing on the margins of civil society but is also inter-

woven into the fabric of mainstream society. Although scholarly accounts of illegal drug supply are

most commonly “bound up with biographies of social exclusion and poverty” (Ancrum, 2014, p. 71),

there is a small but growing body of literature that assesses drug markets situated among society’s

more privileged groups, including Mohamed and Frisvold’s (2010) study of university “dorm room

dealers” and Jacques and Wright’s (2015) study of young suburban suppliers. This article adds to

that body of literature. It begins with a critical discussion of the dominant discourse before outlining

counterweighting evidence that has begun challenging the “‘Us’ ...versus ‘Them’ mentality”

(Hobbs & Antonopoulos, 2013, p. 45). Key findings from the current ethnography are then pre-

sented: first, by outlining personal and group characteristics and drawing distinction between them

and the usual suspects of the illegal drug trade; and second, by assessing the logistical features of

their respective trades, which enabled drug supply to be entwined with conventional daily/weekly

routines. In presenting these data, the article will further elucidate the notion that “the cast [of drug

offenders] is far more varied than prevailing images would lead one to believe” (Waldorf, Reinar-

man, & Murphy, 1991, p. 74).

The Dominant Mainstream Narrative: The Usual Suspects

To date, political discourse, government policy, and the media have persistently presented the

illegal drugs trade as a hostile economy “removed from the fabric of mainstream society” (S. Taylor,

2008, p. 371). Drug markets have been widely depicted as unrestrained and uncivilized arenas

(Boyd, 2002; Coomber, 2006), within which “evil” “others” and “outsiders” (Antonopoulos &

Papanicolaou, 2010; S. Taylor, 2008) – including “alien” (i.e., foreign) organized crime groups

(Hobbs & Antonopoulos, 2013), urban street gangs (Densley, 2014), or “native-born drug addicts”

(Paoli & Reuter, 2008, p. 19) – prey upon an “underclass” (Buchanan & Young, 2000) of

“unproductive, untrustworthy and out of control” addicts (Smith & Riach, 2016, p. 36). Such

sensationalism is nothing new. From the late 1970s, the drugs discourse became highly politicized,

morally charged, prone to racial and class prejudice (Reinarman, 1994; Wacquant, 2009) and was at

times underpinned by methodologically flawed studies or inaccurate media reports (e.g., Goode &

Ben-Yehuda, 1994).

During this period, certain groups became emblematic of the illicit drug economy in Western

culture – they are what we may consider the usual suspects of the illegal drug trade. They are often,

though not always, Black, minority ethnic (Alexander, 2012; Eastwood, Shiner, & Bear, 2013), or

migrant groups (Boyd, 2002; Paoli & Reuter, 2008) who reside and operate in dispossessed urban

communities – known pejoratively as the North American ghetto or European “sink estate.” These

groups are disproportionately targeted and punished by law enforcement agencies for drug offenses

(e.g., Eastwood et al., 2013; Wacquant, 2009) and are subsequently overrepresented within many

Western criminal justice systems (e.g., Alexander, 2012; Paoli & Reuter, 2008). For instance,

Beckett, Nyrop, and Pfingst (2006) identified significant disparities with how authorities in Seattle

policed the city’s drug markets, with police concentrated overwhelmingly on Black and Latino crack

markets while seemingly ignoring the predominantly White neighborhood of Capitol Hill and its

thriving outdoor drug markets. They conclude that “white people who engage in drug transactions

outdoors are simply not perceived as drug offenders by Seattle police officers” (p. 436; see also

Wacquant, 2009, p. 62). In England and Wales, Eastwood, Shiner, and Bear’s (2013) analysis of

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