Understanding that Performance and Image Enhancing Drug Markets are not all the same and why this matters

Professor Ross Coomber, Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Australia

The study of drug markets is expanding both topically and conceptually. Online and easily traceable drug markets have long been around for the sourcing of Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs (PIED) but more recently, so-called crypto drug markets based in the recesses of the Deep Web or the Darknet, are increasingly providing (relatively) anonymous access to PIED and any other illicit street drug. Conceptually there have also been recent moves to understand various types of (licit and illicit) markets where deception, exploitation, predatory behaviour and harms are considered a common outcome and are institutionalised within, or the norm for, such markets as ‘dark markets’. One of the problems with each of these developments is that stereotyped assumptions about, and relative lack of awareness of, traditional drug markets is too often transposed onto the framework for how the new markets should be understood. A weakness in some of the crypto market literature and that of dark markets is that they start from assuming what traditional drug markets look like and then suggest either how that stereotype compares with the new market (crypto markets) or, too simply, use stereotypes to fit the model being suggested (dark markets).

At the local level, in the UK and other jurisdictions where PIED are illegal or strongly controlled, the supply of PIED is commonly presented by the media and enforcement agencies as being almost no different from that of other illicit drug supply. PIED are presented as illegal/controlled substances supplied by people to be essentially understood as drug dealers operating within the normative strictures of illicit drug markets.

The conventional model of the illicit drug market is one where drug markets are often presented as a triangle – a few controllers at the top end with many middle and ‘street’ dealers at the lower end. Typical drug dealer representations are of ‘evil’ uncaring, predatory (usually) men selling to anyone who wants to buy, encouraging addiction and destitution through aggressive marketing of their drugs (sometimes supposedly giving drugs free to children and non-users and/or lacing non-addictive recreational drugs with addicted drugs to get them ‘hooked’). Commonly, as in television programmes like The Wire drug markets are thought of as involving various problematic practices such as the cutting (adulterating) of drugs with dangerous substances and, because of the nature of those involved and the structure of the black market in drugs, for it to be inherently riddled – if not generally ‘organised’ through – the routine use of intimidation and violence. In this way, drug markets are usually conceptualised as essentially similar in form and outcomes and populated by essentially similar types of seller. Suppliers are uncaring (supposedly proven by largely unsubstantiated reference to the use of dangerous cutting agents or selling to children at the school gates) and the market is driven by the pursuit of profit which in turn, combined with it being populated by heinous personnel, leads to inherently violent transactional relations .

The reality is somewhat different however. Any one ‘market’ is in fact made up of multiple markets, some that intersect meaningfully and others that barely touch. Even markets of the same drug type are not necessarily too similar in certain important ways. Many markets are also populated by very different types of ‘supplier’ or ‘dealer’ and this too makes for important variance. Different markets types (e.g. cannabis compared to heroin), perhaps not surprisingly (but rarely acknowledged) can produce entirely different outcomes in terms of risks and problems. Markets populated almost entirely of young people supplying (including supply through brokering and sharing) and purchasing cannabis for example, and in contrast to stereotypes about the dangers of young people being exposed to dangerous drug dealers who try to sell them drugs such as heroin, barely come into contact with the wider drug market. Intimidation and violence is almost entirely absent. The type of supply that predominates among young people’s recreational drug use is called ‘social supply’ or minimally commercial supply. Supply and use that is more about engaging in a social act or ‘sorting’ or helping others out in regards to recreational drugs, than it is about selling for profit. This has even been recognised in the UK by the criminal justice system which tries to differentiate between social supply and ‘dealing proper’.

Even in the heroin/crack marketplace, depending on whether the market has high levels of user-dealers (addicted users that sell primarily to ensure their own supply) or non-using commercially orientated dealers the ways of selling and levels of intimidation and violence present will differ markedly. In user-dealers saturated markets intimidation and violence are low and sometimes almost absent whereas in market saturated by drug dealers proper these markers are much higher. Violence and intimidation also varies depending on other demographics such as whether sellers are male or female, otherwise law abiding, opportunistic, ‘middle-class’ or from a social group where violence is routinely used to resolve all forms of conflict as well as the historical and cultural contexts of any one geographical area.  

Supply among PIED users also differs. Supply to elite sporting performers for example can often involve corrupt pharmacists (or people connected to pharmacy), physicians or those involved in the management of teams and individuals. At the local, non-elite level gym owners and managers have long been involved in supply to clients and customers. Even these individuals have complex relations with many providing (regardless of accuracy) ‘harm reduction’ and other advice around injecting and other use practices. A range of recent research, in Belgium, Holland, Italy and the UK however, has suggested that much, if not most, PIED supplied at the local non-elite level rather than being sourced from ‘dealers’ proper are in fact being sourced from individuals involved in social supply and that in terms of numbers of transactions this likely predominates in this market.

Why is this important? It is important because how suppliers of illicit/controlled substances are categorised, (as with the supply of non-PIED) and understood and the degree to which they are vilified impacts on how they are treated by the criminal justice system. In the same way that it is unhelpful for young cannabis social suppliers or for adult friends that facilitate access to their group to recreational ‘dance drugs’ prior to a festival, a night out at a club or party for little or no profit to be classified and understood as ‘dealers’ proper, and subjected to similar criminal sanctions, it is similarly unhelpful for large numbers of PIED suppliers to also be characterised wrongly. The relative normalisation of certain forms of recreational drug use in society generally, and increasingly the relative normalisation of PIED use among this specific community means that there is also a relative normalisation of friend and acquaintance supply here as in the wider drug market. Given this, and in the same way that the UK courts now acknowledge that user-dealers of heroin are less culpable (in a range of ways) than those dealers whose primary motivation behind supply is profit it is important to acknowledge that many suppliers of PIED at the local non-elite level are closer to being social suppliers – and self-identify as such – than drug dealers. In the same way that is unhelpful to criminalise PIED users it is similarly unhelpful to wrongly attribute stereotyped characteristics of drug markets and drug dealers to all suppliers of PIED and criminalise them in line with those stereotypes.

Further reading:

Coomber, R., Pavlidis, A., Hanley Santos, G., Wilde, M, Schmidt, W. and Redshaw, C. (2015). The supply of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in one English city: Fakes, counterfeits, supplier trust, common beliefs and access. Performance Enhancement & Health, 3(3-4): 135-144

Coomber, R. (2015). A tale of two cities: Understanding differences in levels of heroin/crack market related violence – A two city comparison. Criminal Justice Review, 40(1), 7–31.

Coomber, R., Moyle, L., & South, N. (2015). The normalisation of drug supply? The social supply of drugs as the ‘other side’ of the history of normalisation of use. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy (in press).

Coomber, R. (2011). Social fear, drug related beliefs and drug policy. In G. Hunt, M. Milhet, & H. Bergeron (Eds.), Drugs and culture: Knowledge, consumption and policy (pp. 15–31). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Fincoeur, B., Van de Ven, K., Katinka, K., & Mulrooney, J. D. (2014). The symbiotic evolution of anti-doping and supply chains of doping substances: How criminal networks may benefit from anti-doping policy. Trends in Organized Crime, 1–22.

Moyle, L., & Coomber, R. (2015). Earning a score: An exploration of the nature and roles of heroin and crack cocaine ‘user-dealers.  British Journal of Criminology, 55, 534–555.

Moyle, L., Coomber, R., & Lowther, J. (2013). Crushing a walnut with a sledgehammer? Analysing the penal response to the social supply of illicit drugs. Social Legal Studies, 22(4), 446–466