Role Structure of Illegal Distribution Networks

The structure of illegal drug sales and distribution generally is simple in its general outlines, yet fiendishly complicated in the details when applied to any specific distribution group. The role structure may be grouped into retail level distributors and wholesale distributors. Research (Johnson et al., 1990; Johnson et al., 2000) has delineated two levels of retail distributors:

Low-level distributors engage in a loose assortment of roles in which an “actor” is responsible for either, but never for both, drugs or money. They act as “holders,” “transporters,” “mules,” “deliverers,” “counters,” “lookouts,” “backups,” or “muscle.”

Retail sellers are responsible for both money and drugs (at least temporarily). This role is the functional, if illegal, equivalent of retail clerks in stores. They collect money from someone (usually the final retail consumer) purchasing a commodity.

Wholesale distributors. Dealers routinely purchase large “wholesale” level units of crack, cocaine, or heroin (e.g., ounces, grams, pounds, kilograms), by weight or, especially, by dollar amounts.

Upper-level distributors often import cocaine/heroin from producer countries, purchase, and/or sell multiple kilograms of cocaine. They oversee the financing, smuggling, and transport of these drugs, rarely “handling,” “possessing,” or “transacting in” the drugs they own. These upper level distributors develop and maintain transnational networks of persons who conduct importation and distribution of wholesale quantities, and are labeled as organized criminal groups. (MacCoun and Reuter, 2001).  Features of the Distribution of Drugs Essay.

Key Findings of Empirical Research  About Illicit Drug Distribution

Proportionately very few nonusers of illegal drugs ever engage in illegal sales or transfers of drugs (see Johnson et al., 2000).

Almost all distributors also consume illegal drugs (a few sometimes sell drugs they do not consume regularly). Most distributors primarily provide their labor and skills in exchange for the drugs they consume. Often they receive no cash payments but consume a portion of the drug(s) they are to sell. Low-level distributors routinely switch among the various roles, often within minutes.

Upward mobility from retail seller into dealer and importer roles is very difficult and unlikely. Indeed, the vast majority of illegal drug users often performs the lowest level, and the legally most dangerous, roles in distribution. Almost no low-level distributors and few sellers pay for their own apartment/home or support a family. In the United States, many lower-level distributors live at severe poverty levels. This is true even when their sales income appears to be substantial. (Johnson et al., 1985, 2000).

Distribution hierarchy. Most police, court, and policy interest is focused upon upper level (dealers, suppliers, traffickers). Yet the vast majority (over 80%) of arrestees and court cases are minor sellers and low-level distributors, although they may have extensive and more serious criminal histories (Golub et al., 2002). Effective traffickers, suppliers, and sellers insulate their identities and illegal activities from virtually everyone, except their most trusted coworkers. Suppliers and sellers use impoverished persons to perform dangerous missions and roles, and typically pay them only after successful performance.

Do “Tough Laws” and Long Prison Terms Stop Illicit Distribution?

No!! Few drug distributors stopped sales due to long sentences. They changed their sales tactics in some way to be less visible, to stash their drugs in hidden locations, or moved around more to appear as part of ordinary pedestrian traffic. Features of the Distribution of Drugs Essay. Such laws had no measurable/discernable impact upon drug sellers nor the availability of heroin, cocaine, or crack (Fagan, 1992; Davis and Johnson, 2000; Johnson et al., 1995) Tough laws in the United States are primarily used to coerce guilty pleas to lesser (but very lengthy) sentences from arrested sellers. Long prison sentences for those convicted of heroin and crack sales dramatically expanded (from about 500,000 in 1980 to over 1,900,000 in 2000) jail/prison populations in the United States. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001).

Do “Tough Laws” Stop or Greatly Reduce Illegal Drug Use?

No!! Such laws have had no measurable effect upon patterns of the use of heroin, cocaine, or crack. Generation, ethnic, and gender factors have a much more pronounced effect on drug consumption patterns (Golub and Johnson, 1997, 1999). Generational shifts away from heroin and crack have dramatically reduced markets and profitability of drug selling as a career for thousands of unemployed inner-city youths (Johnson et al., 2000). Several articles have documented dramatic shifts in illicit drug preferences across generational cohorts of arrestees, briefly described here (Golub and Johnson, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001a, b, 2002a, b, c; Johnson et al., 2000; Kandel, 2002; Lipton and Johnson, 1998).

Heroin generation: In New York City, arrestees born from 1945–1954 were very likely to become heroin abusers, this cohort has remained as the major pool of heroin users and injectors to the current time. Arrestees born from 1955–1969 and after 1970 were much less likely to try or inject heroin.

Crack generation: Arrestees born from 1955–1969, tended to avoid heroin, but became (and remain in 2002) those who preferred crack cocaine and cocaine smoking.

Marijuana/blunts generation: Arrestees born from 1970 and later have strong norms against heroin and crack use. This generation prefers “blunts”; they consume marijuana placed within a low-price cigar. Features of the Distribution of Drugs Essay.

Can Effective Policing/Enforcement Greatly Reduce Public Visibility of Illicit Distribution?

A qualified yes! The generational change in youthful drug preference from crack to blunts (marijuana) also coincided with one of the most intensive crackdowns on drug sellers and users ever mounted. During the 1990s to the current time, New York City has expanded the size of its police force, greatly improved its targeting and management of police resources, and expanded the number of offenses resulting in arrest—all to substantially reduce crime rates. Very substantial police resources were devoted to keeping guns and illegal drug sellers off the streets. This large and frequent police presence directed against street-level drug sellers has dramatically reduced the public visibility of selling. (Johnson et al., 2000; Golub et al., 2002, 2003).

Varied and intensive police enforcement activities have broken up the street-level “drug supermarkets” of the late 1980s, ended numerous well-organized dealing operations, and imprisoned many dealers. Almost all arrests result in detention or short stay in jail (or similar penalty). Former locations with heavy street sales are carefully monitored by police and neighborhood organizations (Johnson et al., 2000).

Do Illegal Sellers Still Evade Police Controls?

The sales tactics of hard drug sellers have changed dramatically as a result. In the 1980s, drug sellers on the streets and parks would approach almost all passersby to buy drugs. No longer!! Street sellers now keep a very low street profile and usually restrict sales to known purchasers. The determined heroin or crack user can still obtain the drug(s) of preference from a seller at a public location near their residence or hang outs. Sellers and buyers now systematically cooperate to conceal their illegal transactions from the citizenry and especially from undercover police. But the vast majority of arrestees in New York report that they purchase their heroin and crack in public locations and for lower prices than their counterparts in other U.S. cities. (NIJ, 2003).

What Types of Enforcement Activities Work Best?

Gun controls are the best way to reduce the severity (homicides or serious wounding) of conflicts among drug distributors. Police policies targeting guns and gun carrying have reduced serious crimes (robbery, homicide, and gun possession) (Blumstein and Wallman, 2000). Police policies target those carrying guns and suspected of drug sales. With probable cause, persons with suspicious bulges are stopped and search. Searches often turn up illegal drugs. If an arrest or legal violation occurs in New York City, police policy require officers to take into custody, detain, and arraign, and require courts to impose a minor disposition (a fine or community service). Features of the Distribution of Drugs Essay. Imposing short-term sanctions for apparently minor offenses have been effective at raising offender’s awareness of the need to reduce the public visibility of sales activity or even minor behaviors (such as fare evasion, alcohol drinking in public). Policies focused upon identifying and monitoring the behaviors of persistent misdemeanants will capture a majority of daily hard drug users (Golub et al., 2003). Some of these persons also occasionally perform direct sales or low-level distribution roles.

What About a Police Policy of Not Enforcing Prohibitionist Policies?

The larger society has effectively mandated that police are responsible for enforcing the moral standards of the majority (no hard drug use or sale) upon the minority who use these drugs and who routinely cooperate to evade these restrictions and police tactics. Prohibitionist drug laws are both difficult and expensive for police to enforce effectively. One police policy is to focus only upon high (kilo-)level dealers while ignoring the multitude of small time sellers. A related policy is not to expend any police resources to enforce prohibitionist policies. In the long run, unfortunately, nonenforcement of prohibitionist policies may create as many or more problems as does the enforcement. Nonenforcement policies that permitted addicts to congregate and sell/use heroin in major public locations in Amsterdam and Holland became politically intolerable (MacCoun and Reuter, 2001).

How Do Subcultures of Illegal Sellers Respond?

The illicit drug subculture, led by its sellers and dealers, has proven remarkably resilient and determined to continue business as usual. Sellers have been remarkably adept at locating and exploiting every weakness in law enforcement. This subculture thrives within a police policy of nonenforcement. Such nonenforcement against low-level street sellers was associated with thousands of highly visible street-level sellers in the 1970s and 1980s in New York (Johnson et al., 2000). Due to fear of police corruption in New York, a police policy of nonenforcement (directed at minor sellers) existed for nearly two decades in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, the heroin subculture (and later the crack subculture) developed an extensive network of street sellers, almost all of whom were regular consumers of these drugs. About 1970–1983, thousands of unemployed minority youths in the city took to the streets and parks where they openly sold illegal drugs to all comers. Some streets became drug supermarkets with hundreds of sellers and buyers competing for business. Conflicts among sellers, competing distributor organizations, and an explosion of illegal gun ownership were associated with the highest levels of violent crime and homicide ever known (outside of war conditions) (Blumstein and Wallman, 2000).

How Does Drug User Treatment Impact upon Illegal Drug Distribution?

Over the years, criminal justice practitioners have come to two conclusions regarding drug-involved offenders (a majority of arrestees in New York and elsewhere):

• The cycle of arrest, jail, prison, probation does little to deter the drug consumption and minor criminality of hard-drug-using offenders.

• Mandating various forms of drug user treatment, with enforced attendance, may be the optimal policy for reducing persistent selling or offending behavior. Features of the Distribution of Drugs Essay.

Drug selling and involvement in low-level distribution roles is one type of offending behavior upon which drug user treatment has an immediate and direct impact. If and when user-sellers of hard drugs are enrolled and actually attend drug user treatment sessions, their involvement in illicit drug distribution roles is reduced by 50%–80%(Wexler et al., 1988). This is a more substantial reduction than their use of these substances and often greater than their reductions in nondrug offending (robbery, burglary, theft, and sex work). This is regardless of the appropriateness and quality of the treatment program entered (Magura, 2001).

How About Harm Reduction Approaches?

Harm reduction approaches (such as providing legal needles and condoms) to injection drug users (IDU) may improve the health of individuals and reduce risk to their sexual partners—important ends to achieve in themselves (Johnson et al., 2001). Almost no data suggests that such policies have a direct impact upon IDU involvements in drug distribution (Natarajan and Hough, 2000). However, making methadone easily available to IDUs (as a form of short-term (e.g., detoxification or via methadone buses) and long-term treatment (e.g., methadone maintenance) have repeatedly shown to be associated with reductions in distribution behaviors (Ball and Ross, 1991).

Some Policies Not Considered

It merits noting that New York City and other U.S. cities have never considered the possibility of allowing illicit drug users to have “safe houses” or clinics in which to consume illegal drugs. Nor can the Dutch policy of “separation of markets” be considered in America in the current political climate (Cohen and Kaal, 2001; MacCoun and Reuter, 2001).