The relevance of illegal drug market analysis to substance misuse trends in club culture; Evidence from South Yorkshire, UK

Alan McGauley

Law and Social Science, Sheffield Hallam University, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield, S10 2BP, UK. Phone no: +44 (0)1114 225 2413 E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

South Yorkshire tends to be second division in drug consumption compared to some other areas like Greater London and cities like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. South Yorkshire has, however, been discovered as a drugs market, and its consumption is growing. For example, in a study in 1996, looking at safer dancing, there were 6,200 people who went to dance clubs regularly on a Friday night. In 1999, there were 11,000 and that 11,000 represents quite a substantial market for drug dealers and people in the drug business. Many entrepreneurs use the same kind of market analyses in terms of setting up their business, so they are very market intelligent.

What is the relevance then of illegal market analyses for substance misuse? If you actually analyse drug markets you find that they are a useful tool to let you know what is going on. This research is rooted in the fact that by knowing what is going on something can be done about it, both in terms of harm minimisation and in making positive interventions, that is to try and mediate either the worst effects of the drug market or to do something in terms of policing other sides of the market.

All drugs are commodities; they are globally traded commodities in the same way as petrol or wheat products and you can use a normal economic model to examine those commodities. It is possible to apply the rules of economics to the drug market because the drug dealers apply those very models. In different areas you will see the development of different trends and different fashions in drug markets and these do not happen automatically; it is because a series of things force them to happen. If you can gather market intelligence from a variety of agencies, whether it is drug workers, people working in the clubs, the police or academic researchers, you can then begin to draw yourself almost level with the reality of the drug market. You will never as an enforcement agency or as drug workers be level with what is actually happening because the drug dealers, the drug producers, the entrepreneurs are always going to be one or two steps ahead because it is their very profitable business.

In looking at drugs markets it is seen for example that the market for heroin in urban areas and in semi-urban areas is very different structurally from the market for ecstasy, which is much more of a mass market and operates different rules and regulations. The crack cocaine market in many areas can be extremely violent and hard to enter, and it differs greatly from the cannabis market, so all these different markets for drugs operate in space and in time. They operate largely to different rules yet can also overlap, given that poly-drug use is increasingly the norm and therefore people dip in and out of different markets. A stereotypical cannabis dealer is going to be a different kind of character to a crack cocaine dealer, who is going to be a very different character from a serious ecstasy businessman or woman. They operate within different constraints, both economically and socially, and in terms of the rigour in which competition exists in the illegal drugs market in the UK.

Drug agencies, the police and medical services all require market information to make rational decisions about how they provide a service. Our work analyses the operation of these markets and then draws out policy implications because unless you know what is actually happening or have a good idea of what is happening, you can not devise policies. Our work carries a health warning because it is assumed that during interviews everyone is lying, as that is the way in the drug business whether it is drug dealers or drug users. Even the police and drug agencies have a different spin or interpretation of the reality. To understand this allows real world policies to be developed.

The normalisation of drug use through the dance and club culture has created a very different atmosphere in the mid to late 1990s. Normalisation means that most urban young people will take drugs at sometime during their early teens and beyond. Ecstasy for many people has proved the opposite in terms of the public perception of drugs before the rise of ecstasy. There are no bodies crashed out in dirty stairwells with ecstasy use; no burnt silver paper; no hypodermic syringes; and no spotty youths from the "heroin-screws-you-up" era. Experiences with ecstasy are different and now you can see ecstasy almost as a super package with a logo, with a following, with a brand. It is a branded drug which creates a different environment altogether. It can be argued that normalisation has opened the door to a small percentage of clubbers to go further with their drug use. The difference between the reality of ecstasy use and the horror stories can assist this further experimentation.

This movement to go further with drug use requires one thing which is crucial to drug markets: availability. If heroin is not available people will generally not use it. In Sheffield in 1995 and 1996, there was very little heroin around the dance scene and people interviewed from that era said, "If heroin had been around then we might have tried it because we were younger and naïve". In 1998 and 1999, we see that heroin is available but also large amounts of cocaine are readily available. So what are the consequences?

We need to look at consequences in terms of policies because what we see is that clubbers, young people from 14 through to people of all ages, are very sophisticated. Clubbers are sophisticated consumers: they know the latest labels, what shoes to wear and what brands to wear. Do these sophisticated consumer clubbers in terms of style, different brands of ecstasy, and their music choice realise that ‘brown’ is heroin? Do they realise that heroin is addictive and that it is different from ecstasy or speed? Some do, others do not and therefore people need educating. Sixteen or seventeen year olds in 1999 were born in 1983/4 and they will not remember the dirty needles, the "heroin screws you up" campaigns. People can see the evidence of what heroin has done to the generation before and know the ‘smackhead’ image is not cool, but in areas where heroin never got a grip, particularly in semi-urban areas, it can make more of an impression.

Heroin in South Yorkshire, is readily available almost every-where, costing five pound a deal. It has broken out from traditional areas and gone from being a white poor working class drug, to a ‘chill out’ drug sold as ‘brown’. There are cohorts of 23-24 years old that have been tracked as part of ongoing research who have now moved out of clubs and no longer go clubbing but merely smoke heroin at weekends. You do not have to be a recreational heroin smoker for a long time before it becomes addictive, I would argue, although some researchers do suggest that recreational smoking is possible.

In 1997 research was carried out in a working class community in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, which is an old coal-mining area. The policies were very different from the sort of policies that would come into play for an emerging superclub with problems maybe of gangsterism. So different drug markets require different policy interventions. Also the research has shown that the new generation of heroin dealers are much closer to dance culture. Maybe five years ago they would not have been involved with some of the clubs because they did not feel at ease with that culture. Now they are part of it so they can be in the club or around the margin or after the club and they can sort you out with your ‘brown’ there and then. In the past, these types of dealers were not available in these numbers. They are younger now and part of the culture, and they bring availability to the market. So in terms of market availability, it is everywhere, the price is low and the quality is generally good. The image of ‘brown’ is a lot better than the dirty needles campaign and there are other concepts - the ‘chill outs’, ‘after-clubs’ and different club environments. We would like to look at the way in which drugs gravitate towards different kinds of sub-cultures in clubs; whether, for example, there is more likelihood of heroin dealing in a Goth kind of club than there is in a super cool nightclub and where the different kinds of drugs are going to gravitate. This research information allows appropriate on-site advice to be organised, appropriate to a particular sub-culture.

In 1999, South Yorkshire saw a significant growth in terms of heroin use. In a couple of months, there were forty deaths through heroin use and we are now seeing people aged 17, 19, 21 and 22. Obviously not all of them are linked in with the dance scene but more of them are. Other people have reported more cocaine and it is predicted that 2000 will see a new way for crack use as the price of cocaine falls and crack starts to come in again. You can begin to estimate this by understanding the market. Early warning allows the agencies to be more prepared to produce appropriate responses.

From a global perspective, geopolitics are crucial because the price and availability of heroin is determined by factors that are outside of the control of South Yorkshire police, Liverpool police or the Dutch police. In Afghanistan the Taliban have quadrupled the amount of drugs available through their various routes. In Columbia the cartels are serious global business players, not ‘hole in the wall’ dealers, but billion dollar players. In the Balkans the warlords are all part of this process that ends in clubs and in stairwells in South Yorkshire. The markets can be flooded and the new product ‘brown’ is a result of over-production, so the classic rules of economics apply. Small wars mean big growth in production.

If only 5% of clubbers were occasional heroin smokers in 1999, what number will present as problematic heroin users in 2001? Drug services are beginning to see young clubbers suffering from this problem. Can harm minimisation for heroin work within the club scene? Harm minimisation or harm reduction is great. Why would it be allowed by the club owners, clubbers, the police and funders of drug programmes?

Politics

The battle with drugs is very one sided for drug services which require funding for harm minimisation and other worthy projects. The amounts given for funding are not even dints in a medium range drug dealer’s profits. For an information project to be funded for a year with one worker costs less than one Toyota land cruiser, which a lot of serious urban dealers have as one of their recreational vehicles. The entire South Yorkshire drug squad, all the police, cost less than the annual turnover of one heroin dealer who was recently locked up for seven years. So money is important and markets are important. Agencies and governments need to look at the resources applied by the other side, by the entrepreneurs, and be more serious about harm minimisation and professionalising drug services. They should target at least some of their resources at clubbers so that they can make informed decisions about their drug use, actually know what they are taking and understand the environment. When that battle is evened up, people will actually be able to go out clubbing and enjoy life to the full without the scourge of drugs across them.

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