SOC212: Chapter 46 – Shifts and Oscillations in Upper-Level Drug Traffickers' Careers:

-Many Marijuana smugglers and dealer, who were initially attracted to drug trafficking by the lure of
excitement, high life, and spontaneity, eventually found that the drawbacks of their lifestyle exceeds the
rewards.
-Initial challenges and thrills turn to paranoia. People who they know get busted all around them, and
the risk of their arrest grows. Years of excessive drug use takes its toll on them physically.
-However, they can not easily quit dealing, because they have developed a high-spending lifestyle that
they are loath to abandon.
-One thing that they do is shift around in the drug world, making changes in their involvement.
-However, when this doesn’t bring them satisfaction, they try to retire from trafficking. However,
commonly, they quickly spend all their money and are drawn back to the business.
-Their patterns of deviance are thus a series of oscillations.
-Finally making an exit is often found in other forms of deviant careers as well.

-Upper echelons of marijuana and cocaine trade constitute a world that has never been researched and
analyzed by sociologists.
-Most people envision their drug trafficking as only temporary.
-Once they reach the top rungs of the occupation, they begin periodically quitting and reentering the
field, often changing their degree and type of involvement upon their return.

Setting and Method:

-Each time the marijuana changed hands, its price increase was dependent on a number of different
factors: purchase cost, distance it was transported (including packaging, equipment, and payments to
employees), the amount of risk assumed, and the prevailing prices for the local drug market.
-Cocaine on the other hand, was simply middled, dealt, divided, and cut.
-Upper level drug dealers and smugglers pursued drug trafficking as a full-time occupation.
-Although dealers' and smugglers' business activities varied, they clustered together for business and
social relations, forming a moderately well-integrated community whose members pursued a “fast”
lifestyle.
-The researchers entry into the drug community was largely due to chance (their neighbors were
heavily involved with drug trafficking).
-Research used strategies discussed in Chapter 14 (Researching Dealers and Smugglers).

Shifts and Oscillations:

-Despite the gratifications that dealers and smugglers originally derived from their business, 90% of
those observed had decided, at some point to quit the business.
-This stemmed, in part, from their initial perceptions of their career as temporary. They also became
increasingly aware of the restrictions and sacrifices their occupations required and were tired of living
the fugitive life.
-Like entering, disengaging from drug trafficking was not an abrupt act. Instead, it often resembled a
series of transitions or oscillations.

Aging in the Career:

-Characterized by a progressive loss of enchantment in their career.
-As dealers and smugglers aged in the career, they became more sensitized to the extreme risks they
faced.
-Paranoia sets in.
-Drug world members also grew progressively weary of their exclusion from the legitimate world and
the deceptions they had to manage to sustain that separation.
-Eventually, the rewards of trafficking no longer seemed to justify the strain and risk involved.

Phasing Out:
-Three factors that inhibited dealers and smugglers from leaving the drug world:

Hedonistic/materialistic satisfactions the drug world provided: Once accustomed to earning vast
quantities of money quickly and easily (and to the perks of the “fast life”), individuals found it
exceedingly difficult to return to the straight world.

Dealers and smugglers identified with and developed a commitment to the occupation of drug
trafficking: Their self images were tied to this role and could not be easily disengaged.

Difficulty involved in finding another way to earn a living: Their years spent in illicit activity made it
unlikely for any legitimate organizations to hire them.

-Dealers and smugglers who tried to leave the drug world fell into one of four patterns:

-Big Deal: postponing quitting until one last “big deal” was made (however, this rarely happens).
-Changing immediately: Announced that they were quitting, but outward actions were never varied.
-Suspending their dealings, but not finding an alternate source of income.
-Moving to another line of work: Alternative occupations include 1) those they had previously pursued,
2) front businesses maintained on the side while dealing/smuggling, and 3) new occupations altogether.

-Some problems inherent in these 3 alternative lines of work are: former occupations/themselves have
changed too much, legitimate businesses were unable to support them.
-People don't quit drug trafficking altogether unless they felt confident at a legitimate business could
support them.
-”Bustouts” refer to forced withdrawals from dealing or smuggling, usually motivated by external
factors.

Re-entry:
-Phasing out of the drug world was more often than not, only temporary.
-Re-entry into the drug world could either be viewed as a comeback (from a forced withdrawal), or a
relapse (from a voluntary withdrawal).
-For people making a comeback, returning was based on the same desires that got them in in the first
place.
-Re-entry from a relapse is a more difficult decision, but easier to implement. Many people who leave
this way find that it is too difficult to return to normal lifestyles.

Career Shifts:
-Many re-entries resulted in a career shift to a new segment in the drug world
-These shifts can include: the type of drug being dealt, vertical shifts (high level to low level dealers),
and different styles of operation (more security).
-A final alternative is that some dealers straddle the line between the drug dealing and legitimate world.
Drug dealing went from a primary occupation, to a sideline.

Leaving Drug Trafficking:

-No way to structurally determining in advance whether an exit from the business would be temporary
or permanent.
-As long as individuals had the skills, knowledge, and connections to deal, they retained the potential to
re-enter the business at any time.
-Leaving drug trafficking may thus be a relative phenomenon, characterized by a trailing-off process
where spurts of involvement appear with decreasing frequency and intensity.

Summary:
-Drug dealing and smuggling careers are fraught with multiple attempts at retirement.
-Veteran drug traffickers quit because they become jaded and ambivalent toward the deviant life.
-Potential recruits are lured ij by the materialistic/hedonistic appearance of the drug world.
-Established dealers are lured into regular lives by the attractions of security and social ease.
-Retired drug dealers are lured back because of their experience and expertise.
-People in upper level drug trafficking therefore find it difficult to quit their deviant occupation
permanently, because of the difficulty moving from a legal to illegal business sector (and vice-versa),
and also because of the attachments they have created in the deviant world.