The War on Drugs, Power and Drugs
The War on Drugs, Counter-Terrorism
Moral Panic
Over the past five decades, moral panic has emerged as a textured and nuanced sociological concept. While it may have been (mis)used by politicians and others as a rhetorical device, it is still rigorously used, applied, and debated in sociology and other disciplines.
The phrase was first coined in Stanley Cohen’s monograph Folk Devils and Moral Panics.36 In the first chapter of his monograph, Cohen introduces the concept as follows: Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic.
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.
Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough but suddenly appears in the limelight.
Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself.
The phrase moral panic implies both a collective component in the reaction to an actual or perceived threat, and the disproportionality and reactionary nature of the reaction. Stuart Hall and others add to Cohen’s definition:
When the official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of events is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered, when ‘experts’, in the form of police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors perceive the threat in all but identical terms, and appear to talk ‘with one voice’ of rates, diagnoses, prognoses and solutions, when the media representations universally stress ‘sudden and dramatic’ increases (in numbers involved or events) and ‘novelty’, above and beyond that which a sober, realistic appraisal could sustain, then we believe it is appropriate to speak of . . . a moral panic.
These early accounts of moral panics emerged in the 1970s, yet they remain highly influential to contemporary conceptualization. In more recent research, moral panic has been helpfully reduced to the following constitutive factors:
- concern (anxiety – because of a real or perceived threat);
- (ii) hostility (vilification of a group, labelled in research as “folk devils”).
- (iii) consensus (collective aspect of the reaction); (iv) disproportionality (again, of the reaction); (v) volatility (moral panics often emerge, propagate, and subside quickly).
- (vi) a moral dimension; and
- (vii) the shared conviction that the deviant conduct is symptomatic.
I must emphasize and draw out three aspects of moral panics, which will be of assistance to my discussion of the War on Drugs. First, as noted by Cohen and others, the (mass) media has played a key role in the emergence and intensification of contemporary instances of moral panic.
Likely as a result, the media’s role has been noted in most theoretical frameworks. While the same social phenomena can be observed in earlier societies, contemporary moral panics are intricately tied to the rise of the mass media, incentivized to draw and monetize attention, and the erosion of historical barriers to access to information. Second, as noted, moral panics involve the stigmatization of a particular group.
Significantly, this group is often already marginalized: the “folk devils,” or scapegoats, tend to be those who are already singled out – perhaps because they are different. This point is further discussed in the next Part. Third, contemporary moral panics often involve the criminal law. The behaviour labelled as dev
iant, which society seeks to eradicate, is often criminalized. This is likely a result both criminal law’s unique characteristics and its intrinsic familiarity with the “moral” aspect of moral panics. Of course, the disproportionality of reactions in a moral panic makes the criminal law a uniquely fit tool.
With its stark punishments and more systematic application, it is our strongest legal tool. More importantly, the criminal law has long served non instrumental functions, which are not legitimized beyond the criminal law.
Behaviour is at times criminalized because it is perceived to be wrong: this denunciation of the immorality of the behaviour is valued, regardless of whether criminalization serves more instrumental outcomes like deterrence.
This symbolic aspect of law, often labelled denunciation, is found in criminal codes and statutes – most predominantly in sentencing provisions.
It is a way for a society to “communicate” the significance of deviant behaviour, as well as the ways in which it infringes upon key values or convictions shared by community members – what I have termed “[at times] repugnant situations which shock the public conscience.”
Implicit in such criminalization is a shared, collective anxiety (as invoked in the above definition of a moral panic): the behaviour we criminalize is a threat, a threat to these values and convictions and thereby to the shared identity they define.
Police crackdowns have limited long-term effects. Décary-Hétu & Giommoni (2017) show that after takedowns like Silk Road, Alpha Bay, or Hansa: This technological resilience challenges the assumption that enforcement is effective or legitimate.
Crypto markets represent an important drug market innovation by bringing buyers and sellers of illegal drugs together in a ‘hidden’ yet public online marketplace. We ask: How do crypto market drug sellers and buyers perceive the risks of detection and arrest, and attempt to limit them?
We characterize drug transactions on crypto markets as ‘stretched’ across time, virtual and physical space, and handlers, changing the location and nature of risks faced by crypto market users.
Resilience to law enforcement
The key locations of risk of detection and arrest by law enforcement were found in ‘offline’ activities of crypto market vendors (packaging and delivery drop-offs) and buyers (receiving deliveries).
Strategies in response involved either creating or disrupting routine activities in line with a non-offending identity. Use of encrypted communication was seen as ‘good practice’ but often not employed. ‘
Drop shipping’ allowed some Silk Road vendors to sell illegal drugs without the necessity of handling them. Silk Road participants neither viewed themselves as immune to, nor passively accepting of, the risk of detection and arrest.
Rational choice theorists have viewed offending decisions as constrained by limited access to relevant information. Crypto markets as ‘illicit capital’ sharing communities provide expanded and low-cost access to information enabling drug market participants to make more accurate assessments of the risk of apprehension.
The abundance of drug market intelligence available to those on both sides of the law may function to speed up innovation in illegal drug markets, as well as necessitate and facilitate the development of law enforcement responses.
Several forms of “criminal association” or “anti-bikie” laws have been introduced in Australian jurisdictions.
The laws enacted in Queensland, one Australian jurisdiction and the focus in this paper echo similar efforts overseas in New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands (Ayling, 2013a, Cash, 2012). The aims of criminal association laws in essence include: to declare a specific organisation as ‘criminal’;
to impose restrictions that thwart the consorting of members; and to exercise enhanced powers for measures such as confiscating unexplained wealth (Bartels, 2010). These laws go towards achieving supply reduction, which is one of the three pillars of Australia’s harm minimisation National Drug Strategy (Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, 2011).
About supply reduction the aim of anti-association laws is to assist domestic policing (Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, 2011). Anti-association laws could now be considered an important tool in the fight against organised crime.
In Queensland’s experience, the introduction of such laws was ultimately a disproportionate response catalysed by public displays of violence by OMCGs.
The reaction was characteristic of a moral panic with key ingredients including: episodic events/phenomena perceived as highly volatile; vilification of a defined group (OMCGs) who are seen as symbolic of the problem; public anxiety from perception of a heightened risk to society; significant and sensational media attention; and an institutional response seemingly out of proportion to the threat posed (Carrabine, 2008, Cohen, 2002).
There is evidence of all these factors in highly public episodes of OMCG violence; including shootings (for summary of key events see: Ravn, Westthorp, & Laughlin, 2013; Stigwood, 2015, Swanwick, 2008; Welch, Kennedy, & Harvey, 2009). These incidents attracted significant media attention and calls from the public for tougher action to combat these groups.
This ‘bikie moral panic’ is not an experience isolated to Queensland as studies from New South Wales and abroad have drawn similar comparisons (Katz, 2011, Mann and Ayling, 2012; Morgan, Dagistanli, & Martin, 2010). Media attention to OMCGs has increased dramatically in the last five years.
A search of the Factiva media database using the search terms “OMCG”, “bikie” and “drugs” within Australian media content was conducted.
It revealed that in 2011 there were 79 stories that met the search terms. Since then, these types of stories have increased dramatically with 891 in 2012, 1211 in 2013, 1176 in 2014 and 1112 stories in 2015. Such media scrutiny and high-profile events have meant that OMCGs have been the target of specific criminal organisation laws with a view to addressing public and media unrest on the issue
(Ananian-Welsh and Williams, 2014, Ayling, 2011, Ayling, 2013b). When faced with moral panic it is often the knee jerk reaction of governments to enact laws with little real practical value (Carrabine, 2008).
This serves two benefits, the first being that the government can claim to be active in addressing the issue and the second is the value of being able to claim that they have the toughest policy or legislation in place to deal with crime. This position is like the “do something” mentality that permeates society in the face of a threat that causes moral panic (Katz, 2011; p. 233).
It also allows governments to have an expressive or symbolic piece of legislation that shows it is acting on the problem (Ayling, 2013b). To some extent political expediency overtakes good law making and effective law enforcement under such circumstances.
Further to this end, a community’s perception of crime is an important performance indicator for any police service.
The Queensland Police Service (2013) nominated the level of community confidence and satisfaction with police performance as two of their key performance indicators in their strategic plan. The perceived ability of a law enforcement agency to deal effectively with a real or otherwise threat, such as OMCGs, is of vital importance in maintaining community confidence
(Ren, Cao, Lovrich, & Gaffney, 2005). While the introduction of laws targeting OMCGs may have served to temporarily quell public concern and satisfy calls for tougher crime control, there have been significant criticisms of these kind of association laws introduced both here and internationally (
Ayling, 2011, Katz, 2011, Law Council of Australia, 2014, Morgan et al., 2010, Sarre, 2013, Schloenhardt, 2008a). Some of the negative claims are that they are ineffective and that they contravene civil and political rights (Gray, 2009, Law Council of Australia, 2014).
The anti-association laws introduced in Canada in 2001 have been criticised for having no impact in decreasing organised crime offences, nor the illicit drug market activity of OMCGs (Schloenhardt, 2008b). There was scepticism that the laws were merely an attempt to expand police powers for no justifiable reason (Freedman, 2006).
