Researcher’s new book examines drugs and social inequality

Drug cartels have much in common with the makers of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, according to anthropologist Merrill Singer in a new book.

“While the above-ground sector of the drug industry tends to be wrapped in a ‘cloak of social legitimacy,’ the underground sector generally suffers the ‘stain of illegality,’” says Singer, author of Drugging the Poor: Legal and Illegal Drugs and Social Inequality.

But, he says, both factions have “many shared features and common strategies for achieving their goals.”

Singer, a senior research scientist at UConn’s Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention, says the book stems from some 17 years of research and interviews with thousands of drug users.

The book is his third in a series on drugs.

He says the cartels and so-called “bad guys” are seen as promoting illegal drugs and are linked with terrorism, while the alcohol industry promotes baseball leagues and high school sports, and builds stadiums.

But illegal drug corporations actually engage in many of the same positive behaviors as legal ones, such as philanthropy, Singer says.

“In the book, I’m trying to make the point that our conceptions and the way we think about drugs – trying to make a separation between the legal and illegal – is to a degree, a fantasy,” he says.

“There is incredible similarity between the above ground and below ground parts of the industry. Some have even said, ‘These illegal corporations seem to be reading from MBA textbooks.’

“We don’t see too much of it in the U.S., but in the countries of origin, the large illegal cocaine companies are building soccer stadiums and planting trees in local communities,” Singer says.

“They’re courting favor for the same reasons as legal companies: building public relations. It gives them a positive image.”

Outsourcing and branding, the same kinds of marketing strategies that are used by legal corporations, are also used by illegal ones, he says: “It’s all driven by profit.”

“The drug industry produces drugs that people use to alter their emotional states,” he says.

“In the case of pharmaceuticals, while they ostensibly market legally, a huge number of [drugs] are diverted for illegal use. There are serious questions as to what degree the legal manufacturers recognize they have an illicit market.”