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Lethal Exchange: Synthetic Drug Networks in the Digital Era

By C4ADS

The illicit synthetic drug networks that fuel the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States continue to evolve and adapt to changing incentives and pressures, finding innovative ways to exploit technology and increased global interconnectivity. The digital age, in particular, has had a transformative role in allowing synthetic drug networks to take root. Fentanyl networks are among the world’s first digital native drug networks. Global internet connectivity has opened a new era of drug distribution by facilitating direct-to-consumer transactions, rapid reaction to enforcement trends, and the delivery of retail, rather than wholesale, drug volumes through licit commercial delivery services.

C4ADS investigated these drug supply chains, conducting extensive multilingual analysis of Chinese corporate entities, the clear web, and social media, in order to better understand the methods by which they operate.

Washington, DC: C4ADS 2020, 45p.

Complexities and conveniences in the international drug trade: the involvement of Mexican criminal actors in the EU drug market

By Europol and US Drug Enforcement Administration

The EU drug landscape is populated by a diverse range of criminal actors involved in the production, trafficking and distribution of a variety of illicit substances. These actors benefit from a number of criminal enablers and facilitators in their operations. In recent years, seizures of methamphetamine and cocaine linked to Mexican criminal actors have emerged as a prominent feature of the EU drug landscape. Mexican criminal actors and EU-based criminal networks have been working together to traffic both of these illicit drug types from Latin America to the EU.

This report delves into the activities of these criminals and their methods. Drug trafficking operations benefit from a number of different actors, such as brokers, cooks, envoys, intermediaries and money laundering service providers. Examples of the methods used by the criminals include the corruption of officials in the public and private sectors and the exploitation of legal business structures. The report also provides an outlook on potential threats that may develop in the future.

In the first initiative of this kind, Europol and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have issued this joint strategic product with the aim of expanding the intelligence picture on the involvement of Mexican criminal actors in the EU drug market.

The Hague: Europol and the DEA, 2022. 8p.

Supplier Enforcement and the Opioid Crisis,

By J. Travis Donahoe

This paper studies the effects of shutting down prescribers, dispensers, and distributors that inappropriately handle prescription opioids on local opioid supply and mortality. With competitive supply, theory suggests the effects of closing any single supplier will be offset by substitution. Closing a supplier may have an effect on overall supply, however, if the targeted supplier is more lax with prescriptions than others or if the action has general deterrence effects. To examine enforcement empirically, I exploit differential timing of initial enforcement actions across areas following a federal expansion of enforcement in 2008. I show enforcement reduced overall opioid shipments by 20 percent in the average affected county for three years. Results further show that enforcement actions targeting distributors primarily reduced opioid shipments to pharmacies and clinics with suspicious order patterns. Overall, these findings demonstrate a large role for supplier enforcement to reduce harmful prescription opioid supply. Enforcement actions had heterogeneous effects on mortality. In Florida, which experienced the most enforcement, overdose death rates fell by 22 percent due to enforcement actions for five years. Outside of Florida, where enforcement was less intensive, overall mortality was unaffected. This heterogeneity is an important policy issue. (Job Market Paper)

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2022. 69p.

Detoxifying Colombia's Drug Policy: Colombia's counternarcotics options and their ipact on peace and state building

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Colombia’s counternarcotics policy choices have profound impact on consolidating peace in the wake of the 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — Ejército del Pueblo, FARC) and on the building of an effective state. Strategies of forced or voluntary eradication of coca crops have proven ineffective. As evidence from around the world shows, a long-term comprehensive effort to promote alternative livelihoods for coca growers — integrated into rural development and supported by well-designed interdiction efforts, with eradication delayed until these alternative livelihoods are generating sustainable income — has the best prospects for producing peace and a capable state and for reducing drug production.

To achieve sustainable and robust reduction of illicit crop cultivation, Colombia must thus expand its timeline of drug policy and state-building intervention well beyond 15 years. To achieve any viable transformative effects, it will also have to concentrate resources to selected zones of strategic intervention and gradually connect them and expand them to encompass larger areas in state intervention efforts.

The alternative livelihoods approach requires a concerted effort to build international support, particularly with the United States. It also requires countering the objections of Colombia’s political right. Arguments can be framed around the ineffective and counterproductive outcomes of forced eradication, the demonstrated benefits of comprehensive alternatives livelihood combined with well-designed interdiction to reduce the power of criminal groups, and other counternarcotics priorities in the United States.

A zero-coca conceptualization that insists on eradication first and conditions development aid on prior eradication of coca jeopardizes peace-building and statebuilding. In Colombia and elsewhere in the world, it has consistently failed to produce a sustainable reduction of coca cultivation. Forced eradication undermines the peace deal with the FARC and the broader legitimacy and presence of the state by jeopardizing the state’s ability to establish meaningful presence in areas formerly dominated by nonstate armed groups and radicalizing communities and cocalero (coca cultivator) movements. Aerial spraying will only compound these problems; drones will not redress the negative political effects, even if somewhat increasing the precision of spraying.

Washington, DC: Brookings Foreign Policy , 2020. 30p.

Leveraging Telehealth for Justice-involved Populations With Substance Use Disorders: Lessons Learned and Considerations for Governors

By U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance

his brief reviews activities undertaken by states to expand the use of telehealth for justice-involved individuals with SUDs during the COVID-19 pandemic, shares lessons learned, and highlights considerations for governors who wish to leverage telehealth services to increase access to SUD treatment for those involved in the justice system. Justice-involved individuals have historically had difficulties accessing treatment for SUDs and co-occurring behavioral health disorders. These difficulties can be mitigated by the benefits provided by telehealth, which include increased access to care for patients, reduced stigma, improved safety for staff, cost reductions for correctional institutions, and overall improvements to quality of care. In recent years, governors and state correctional and health officials have made great strides to improve access to SUD treatment for justice-involved individuals—both those within correctional facilities and on community supervision. Lessons learned for expanding these programs include ensuring access to evidence-based medication and treatment, emphasizing collaboration among justice systems and health partners, developing tailored treatment plans, reducing treatment barriers upon release, staff training, and developing robust program evaluation plans. States that have implemented telehealth services for justice-involved populations recognize several advantages for using them for treatment. States also identified several challenges with using telehealth services. States may consider these challenges and lessons learned when implementing or expanding telehealth programs for justice-involved individuals with SUDs.

Washington, DC: BJA, 2023, 6p.

Port in a Storm: Organized Crime in Odesa since the Russian invasion

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Odesa is a city of immense importance to Ukraine. Its port is the gateway through which most of Ukraine’s trade with the world is conducted, but it also holds a deeply symbolic place in the country’s heart – the so-called ‘Jewel of the Black Sea.’

It has also long been one of the most criminalized cities in Ukraine, both in terms of illicit flows through its port (including drugs, weapons, and contraband) and the high levels of corruption around the construction industry, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and the customs agency. The city itself was also a stronghold of pro-Russian sentiment, even after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych (who was politically close to Moscow), the conflict in the Donbas, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. At the same time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine dealt a severe blow to organized crime in Odesa.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime., 2023. 48p.

Atlantic Connection: The PCC and the Brazil-West Africa Cocaine Trade

By Gabriel Feltran, Isabela Vianna Pinho and Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo

Cocaine trafficking through West Africa, following the well-established route from Latin America to the European consumer market, appears to be in a phase of sharp growth. Since 2016, the majority of consignments transiting West Africa begin their journey in Brazil. The Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – the largest criminal organization in Brazil – is pivotal to understanding Brazil’s newfound importance for cocaine in West Africa.

Cocaine trafficking between Brazil and West Africa stretches back at least to the 1980s, but as cultivation in Latin America continues to increase and consumption in Europe has grown, more and more cocaine is being moved along this path. In 2018, only one West African country – Senegal – was in the top 10 destinations for cocaine seized in Brazilian ports; by 2019, after a bumper year of seizures in Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone had also pushed their way onto the list. Cultivation in Latin America reached record levels in 2021, and in the following year an unprece-dented 24 tonnes were seized across West Africa.

In this report, we focus on the flow of cocaine between Brazil and West Africa, which largely supplies the lucrative European consumer market, and in particular on the role of the PCC, which straddles various illicit supply chains.

The research for this report has drawn on various data collection techniques but rests primarily on field observations of the retail trade and transit of illegal goods in South America, West Africa and Europe between 2015 and 2022. These observations, described in detail in the authors’ field notebooks, were supplemented by formal and informal interviews with those involved in the cocaine trade, from the South American borders to the retail trade spaces of Europe, allowing us to trace the journey of cocaine through the different nodes of the value chain.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023 28p.

Black Gold: Exposing North Korea's Oil Procurement Networks

By James Byrne and Joe Byrne

North Korea relies on the outside world to import fuel.26 With no demonstrated oil reserves and limited domestic refinery capacity, imports of refined petroleum products are vital to the regime’s stability and survival. As in all modern economies, energy—predicated on a constant flow of fuel into the country—underpins North Korea’s domestic and export economy, as well as Pyongyang’s capacity to train and field armed forces and develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The international community’s efforts to cap North Korea’s oil and petroleum products imports in 2017 forced Pyongyang to adapt its fuel-procurement strategy. This report finds that North Korea has been engaging organized criminal networks and participating in a regional fuel smuggling market in violation of international sanctions, and that the nation is demonstrating increasingly sophisticated and previously unseen tactics to evade detection. Even by conservative estimates, Pyongyang appears to have successfully bypassed fuel sanctions and exceeded the cap imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) each year since the introduction of the limit.27 Despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and by North Korea’s restrictions on port traffic, analysis of highresolution satellite imagery of oil terminals and import facilities suggests North Korea has once again breached the import cap in 2020. Through analysis of AIS data and satellite imagery, the authors found that the proportion of fuel deliveries to North Korean ports by foreign-flagged tankers is significant and has been increasing.28 This phenomenon raises important questions about the entities behind these sanctions violations, and it calls for scrutiny of how smugglers continue to evade detection and identification while transporting fuel within some of the most heavily monitored waters in the world. In this investigation we find the following: North Korea has tapped into an existing fuel smuggling economy in East Asia to procure fuel at volume. Different national-level regulatory and pricing regimes for fuel in the region create arbitrage opportunities that smugglers have long exploited to generate immense profit. These smugglers divert fuel from the licit market to sell to various customers, one of which is North Korea. Taiwan appears to be a key locus in this regional black market for fuel. The country’s preferential fuel policies price refined petroleum products lower than those of its neighbors, creating opportunities for arbitrage and offering smugglers a cheap and readily available source of fuel. Additionally, several of the networks and entities engaged in DPRK–related fuel smuggling operate from or out of addresses or ports in Taiwan. The country’s waters are also being exploited by illicit actors conducting DPRK-related, ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of fuel in a multilayered shuttle system that bisects both “dirty” vessels traveling directly to North Korea and “clean” vessels discreetly supplying those direct-delivery tankers with fuel on the high seas. North Korea’s illicit fuel supply chain has links to organized crime. Several of the key actors in North Korea’s fuel procurement originate from, and maintain connections to, Fujian province, China and, in particular, the city of Shishi. Shishi and the nearby coastal cities of Fujian province have long been a regional smuggling hub for illicit goods, such as cigarettes, wildlife products, drugs, and fuel. These actors appear to constitute a loose criminal federation whose interests and activities intersect to smuggle fuel to North Korea. A key node in this DPRK fuel procurement network appears to be the Winson Group, a major regional oil trader. The Winson Group is headquartered in Singapore and has offices across East Asia; it has links to several shipping and oil trading companies in the region, as well as businesses registered in secrecy jurisdictions, through which it has connections to possible STS transfers of fuel that ultimately end up in North Korea. The founder of the Winson Group also has a documented history of cigarette and fuel smuggling and alleged connections to illicit DPRK-related commercial activities. This report finds that North Korea’s shipping and maritime sanctions evasion tactics are highly adaptive and growing increasingly sophisticated in response to pressure from and enforcement by the international community. While these outcomes indicate the sanctions regime has complicated and increased the cost of illicit business for North Korea, the demonstrated adaptability of the country’s maritime trade networks also underscores, in dramatic fashion, the growing cost of monitoring, detection, and enforcement. This report also highlights the need for authorities to better explore the connections between North Korea, underground economies, and transnational organized crime, and it adds to the existing but underexplored literature of the country’s links to organized criminal networks. Relying on sanctions to block North Korea’s licit avenues of procurement creates a supply-and-demand dynamic between providers of illicit goods and services—often criminal organizations—and Pyongyang. To stay abreast of North Korea’s evolving tactics for evading sanctions, this report recommends that international, government, and civil regulators proactively monitor criminal networks that provide the country with contraband goods and services, while closing regulatory loopholes in the international sanctions regime, rather than reactively investigating instances of sanctions evasion.

Washington, DC: c4ads, 2021. 84p.

Illicit arms flows in the Karamoja Cluster: actors, markets, impacts and alternative responses

By Mohamed Daghar, Willis Okumu and Tadesse Simie Metekia

This study explores links between cattle rustling in East Africa’s Karamoja Cluster and the flow of illicit arms into this ungoverned space.

This study looks at the links between cattle rustling in East Africa’s Karamoja Cluster and the flow of illicit arms into this ungoverned space. It looks at the actors involved in the illicit arms trade, the sources of the weapons, and the need for responses other than civilian disarmament exercises, which so far have been unsuccessful.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 20p.

In the post-COVID-19 era, is the illegal wildlife trade the most serious form of trafficking?

By J. Sean Doody, Joan A. Reid, Klejdis Bilali, Jennifer Diaz and Nichole Mattheus

Despite the immense impact of wildlife trafficking, comparisons of the profits, costs, and seriousness of crime consistently rank wildlife trafficking lower relative to human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking. Using the published literature and current events, we make the case, when properly viewed within the context of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases transmitted from wildlife, that wildlife trafficking is the most costly and perhaps the most serious form of trafficking. Our synthesis should raise awareness of the seriousness of wildlife trafficking for humans, thereby inducing strategic policy decisions that boost criminal justice initiatives and resources to combat wildlife trafficking.

Crime Sci. 2021; 10(1): 19.

Illegal waste fly-tipping in the Covid-19 pandemic: enhanced compliance, temporal displacement, and urban–rural variation

By Anthony C. Dixon, Graham Farrell & Nick Tilley

Objective

Illegal dumping of household and business waste, known as fly-tipping in the UK, is a significant environmental crime. News agencies reported major increases early in the COVID-19 pandemic when waste disposal services were closed or disrupted. This study examines the effect of lockdowns on illegal dumping in the UK.

Method

A freedom of information request was sent to all local authorities in the UK asking for records of reported incidents of fly-tipping for before and after the first national lockdown. ARIMA modelling and year-on-year comparison was used to compare observed and expected levels of fly-tipping. Urban and rural local authorities were compared.

Results

A statistically significant decline in fly-tipping during the first lockdown was followed by a similar increase when lockdown ended. The effects largely cancelled each other out. There was pronounced variation in urban–rural experience: urban areas, with higher rates generally, experienced most of the initial drop in fly-tipping while some rural authorities experienced an increase.

Conclusion

Waste services promote compliance with laws against illegal dumping. When those services were disrupted during lockdown it was expected that fly-tipping would increase but, counter-intuitively, it declined. This enhanced compliance effect was likely due to increased perceived risk in densely populated urban areas. However, as lockdown restrictions were eased, fly-tipping increased to clear the backlog, indicating temporal displacement.

Crime Science (2022) 11:8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-022-00170-3

Diversifying Violence: Mining, export-agriculture, and criminal governance in Mexico

By Joel Salvador Herrera and , Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez

A growing body of evidence suggests that criminal organizations across the Global South actively exploit natural resources in the communities where they operate with important sociopolitical consequences. In this article, we investigate the case of Mexico where the incursion of criminal groups into the mining and export-agricultural sectors impacts violence at the local level. We propose two mechanisms that explain why criminal groups diversify. First, the war-profit motive suggests that competition and state repression prompt criminal organizations to look for non-traditional sources of incomes and to build up their violence-making capacities. Second, the governance motive suggests that extracting rents from key industries represents a strategy for these organizations to establish territorial control in local communities. Using homicide data from 2007 to 2011, we demonstrate that access to primary sector revenues is associated with higher levels of violence among Mexican municipalities. Using qualitative evidence from Michoacán, we show how the introduction of criminal governance systems to rural areas was a key factor in explaining why criminal groups diversified toward mining and export-agriculture.

World Development. Volume 151, March 2022, 105769

Regulating Illicit Gold: Obstacles and Opportunities in the United States

By: Henry Peyronnin

Regulating Illicit Gold draws on C4ADS analysis of the illicit gold trade to identify obstacles facing regulators and companies as they seek to achieve compliance with conflict minerals regulations, highlights the limitations of existing US laws pertaining to illegal gold and other minerals, and explores several potential areas in which these regulations can be strengthened or extended.

US lawmakers and public officials recognize the trade in illicit gold as a pressing environmental and social problem, but no comprehensive regulatory framework exists under which to stop the flow of illicit gold to the United States. The challenge of tracing gold supply chains is complicated by four key factors: gold’s physical and commercial characteristics; the growing sophistication of illicit gold trading networks; corruption in source, transit, and destination countries; and the fragmentation of the global gold market. Although two laws partially address this regulatory gap in the United States, neither provides a strong set of rules that apply equally to public companies and private entities. Regulating Illicit Gold draws on C4ADS analysis of the illicit gold trade to identify obstacles facing regulators and companies as they seek to achieve compliance with conflict minerals regulations, highlight the limitations of existing US laws pertaining to illegal gold and other minerals, and explores several potential areas in which these regulations can be strengthened or extended.

Washington, DC: C4ADS March, 2021. 18p.

Litterbugs 2.0: The Post-Covid Fight in the Battle Against Litter

By James Allan

Litter is ugly and an overwhelming majority of Britons want action. Since the 1960s littering has increased by 500%. Years of inaction, compounded by a lack of personal responsibility and a sharp increase in littering during the COVID-19 pandemic has made the problem worse.

Policy Exchange first recommended a national and coordinated approach to litter in Litterbugs published in 2009, but it was not until 2017 that the Government published the first ever national strategy that dealt with litter and littering behaviour. Furthermore, in 2022 the Office for Environmental Protection has said that the Government has yet to move beyond mere commitments to policy delivery.

This report calls for the Government to implement a new and revitalised Litter Strategy, including a significantly more aggressive approach to fines, including higher penalties, with a Local Authority League Table to name and shame those councils that are not using their powers; a new National Litter Awareness Course (modelled on the National Speed Awareness Course), backed by educational campaigns, to transform attitudes to personal responsibility; increased investment in bin infrastructure, with consideration of bins embedded in local design codes; and a large scale pilot of a digitised Deposit Return Scheme to enhance recycling.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 45p.

Lethal Experiment: How the CITES-approved ivory sale led to increased elephant poaching

By Allan Thornton, et al.

A report into how the first CITES-approved ivory sale led to an increase in elephant poaching.

In 1997, CITES Parties voted to down-list the elephant populations of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, followed swiftly by a supposedly one-time only sale in 1999 of stockpiled ivory to Japan.

This report provides documentation of the resulting soaring rates across the African continent, despite the predictions of ‘experts’ that such a sale would satiate the market.

London: Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), 2020. 36p.

A Question of Scales: Assessing strategies for countering illegal trafficking of Pangolins in Africa

By Richard Chelin

Pangolin trafficking is not simply an environmental management problem – it is a transnational organised crime.

Pangolins – also known as scaly anteaters – are among the most trafficked wildlife species in Africa and are considered the most trafficked mammal globally. The huge demand for their scales and meat, largely from Southeast Asia, has created a lucrative illicit market run by transnational criminal syndicates.

In Africa, most countries use generic anti-wildlife crime policies and strategies to address the illicit trade in pangolins. This approach fails to address specific issues related to the protection of pangolins, such as the loopholes in policies in dealing with the illegal trade in the species.

This policy brief identifies the gaps in existing policies and strategies, and offers evidence-based policy recommendations for the protection of pangolins and to stem illicit trade in Africa.

Enact Africa, 2019. 16p.

Changes in alcohol consumption associated with social distancing and self-isolation policies triggered by COVID-19 in South Australia: a wastewater analysis study

By Richard Bade, Bradley S. Simpson, Maulik Ghetia, Lynn Nguyen, Jason M. White, Cobus Gerber

Aim: To assess the effects of social distancing and social isolation policies triggered by COVID-19 on alcohol consumption using wastewater analysis in Adelaide, South Australia.

Design: Longitudinal quantitative analysis of influent wastewater data for alcohol concentration.

Setting: Adelaide, South Australia.

Participants: Wastewater catchment area representative of 1.1 million inhabitants.

Measurements: Twenty-four hour composite influent wastewater samples were collected from four wastewater treatment plants in Adelaide, South Australia for 7 consecutive days (Wednesday–Tuesday) every 2 months from April 2016–April 2020. The alcohol metabolite ethyl sulfate was measured in samples using chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Data were population-weighted adjusted with consumption expressed as standard drinks/day/1000 people. Weekly consumption and weekend to mid-week consumption ratios were analysed to identify changes in weekday alcohol use pattern.

Findings: Estimated weekend alcohol consumption was significantly lower (698 standard drinks/day/1000 people) after self-isolation measures were enforced in April 2020 compared with the preceding sampling period in February 2020 (1047 standard drinks/day/1000 people), P < 0.05. Weekend to midweek consumption ratio was 12% lower than the average ratio compared with all previous sampling periods. April 2020 recorded the lowest alcohol consumption relative to April in previous years, dating back to 2016.

Conclusions: Wastewater analysis suggests that introduction of social distancing and isolation policies triggered by COVID-19 in Adelaide, South Australia, was associated with a decrease in population-level weekend alcohol consumption.

Addiction, Volume116, Issue6. June 2021. Pages 1600-1605

COVID-19 Restrictions, Pub Closures, and Crime in Oslo, Norway

By Manne Gerell, Annica Allvin, Michael Frith & Torbjørn Skardhamar

Alcohol consumption and crime are closely linked and there is often more crime near pubs and bars. Few studies have considered the impact of restricting access to pubs or bars on crime, and the present study aims to provide more insight into this by using the restrictions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment. In Oslo, Norway, alcohol serving was banned twice during 2020, and at other times during the year, restrictions were placed on how late it could be served. In the present paper, these restrictions are analysed, alongside more general COVID-19 restrictions, to assess their association with crime. To identify these, we employ negative binomial regression models of daily crime counts for nine types of crime adjusted for the day of the week, the week of the year, and the year itself. This is in addition to the presence, or absence, of alcohol-related restrictions and more general COVID-19 restrictions. The findings suggest that both, general restrictions and bans on serving alcohol, reduced crime, although not universally across all crime types and times of the day. When pubs are ordered not to sell alcohol after midnight there appears to be an unexpected increase in crime.

Nordic Journal of Criminology. 2022, 23 (2), 136-155, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2578983X.2022.2100966

Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine

By Jennifer J. Carroll

Against the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania considers whether substance use disorders are everywhere the same and whether our responses to drug use presuppose what kind of people those who use drugs really are. Jennifer J. Carroll's ethnography is a story about public health and international efforts to quell the spread of HIV. Carroll focuses on Ukraine where the prevalence of HIV among people who use drugs is higher than in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and unpacks the arguments and myths surrounding medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in Ukraine. What she presents in Narkomania forces us to question drug policy, its uses, and its effects on "normal" citizens. Carroll uses her findings to explore what people who use drugs can teach us about the contemporary societies emerging in post-Soviet space. With examples of how MAT has been politicized, how drug use has been tied to ideas of "good" citizenship, and how vigilantism towards people who use drugs has occurred, Narkomania details the cultural and historical backstory of the situation in Ukraine. Carroll reveals how global efforts supporting MAT in Ukraine allow the ideas surrounding MAT, drug use, and HIV to resonate more broadly into international politics and echo into the heart of the Ukrainian public.

Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press Ithaca and London, 2019. 251p.

Addiction, Modernity, and the City: A Users’ Guide to Urban Space

By Christopher B.R. Smith

Examining the interdependent nature of substance, space, and subjectivity, this book constitutes an interdisciplinary analysis of the intoxication indigenous to what has been termed "our narcotic modernity." The first section – Drug/Culture – demonstrates how the body of the addict and the social body of the city are both inscribed by "controlled" substance. Positing addiction as a "pathology (out) of place" that is specific to the (late-)capitalist urban landscape, the second section – Dope/Sick – conducts a critique of the prevailing pathology paradigm of addiction, proposing in its place a theoretical reconceptualization of drug dependence in the terms of "p/re/in-scription." Remapping the successive stages or phases of our narcotic modernity, the third section –Narco/State – delineates three primary eras of narcotic modernity, including the contemporary city of "safe"/"supervised" consumption. Employing an experimental, "intra-textual" format, the fourth section –Brain/Disease – mimics the sense, state or scape of intoxication accompanying each permutation of narcotic modernity in the interchangeable terms of drug, dream and/or disease. Tracing the parallel evolution of "addiction," the (late-)capitalist cityscape, and the pathological project of modernity, the four parts of this book thus together constitute a users’ guide to urban space.

London; New York: Routledge, 2016. 252p.