Power & Inequality
The W.o.D, New World
State-Corporate Crime
State-Corporate Crime (Whyte):
This lens allows for a critique of the hypocrisy inherent in drug control. It examines how the state criminalises certain substances while simultaneously engaging in symbiotic relationships with powerful legal drug corporations (alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical industries like Purdue Pharma), whose products also generate massive social and public health harms. This positioning reveals the political and economic interests that sustain the punitive drug control apparatus.Why This Research Matters
A critical examination of the War on Drugs is indispensable because its consequences extend far beyond consumption patterns, acting as a powerful lens through which to understand contemporary structural inequalities and political dysfunction across several critical domains:
Inequality and Race: The research is crucial for exposing how the War on Drugs operates as a system of racial governance. Its selective enforcement has been the primary driver of mass incarceration in the United States and has perpetuated systemic disadvantage, joblessness, and political disenfranchisement in minority communities. Understanding this process is vital for any analysis of modern civil rights and social justice.
Public Health Failure: The policy’s punitive focus has catastrophically undermined public health goals. By criminalising addiction and stigmatising users, the War on Drugs has deterred individuals from seeking treatment, fuelled the spread of blood-borne diseases (HIV/Hepatitis C), and, most tragically, contributed to the explosive rise in opioid overdose fatalities by forcing the market underground and destroying quality control. The research is necessary to pivot policy discussions from criminal justice to evidence-based harm reduction.
Scope and Limitations
The primary geographical focus of this research will be the United States, given its historical role as the architect and global exporter of the War on Drugs paradigm, with significant comparative analysis of its impact in key global regions, particularly Latin America and the United Kingdom, to assess the globalisation of punitive policy. The policy timeframe encompasses the period from Nixon's 1971 declaration to the present day, with a strong emphasis on the post-1980s era of mass incarceration and contemporary challenges posed by the opioid crisis and digital drug markets.
A necessary limitation is the scope of primary data collection; the analysis relies primarily on a critical review of established criminological, sociological, and public health literature. Furthermore, while the research acknowledges the complexity of individual addiction, the primary focus is on structural and institutional harms, rather than individual psychology.
Criminal Justice Overreach and Militarisation: The War on Drugs has facilitated the rapid militarisation of domestic police forces, the normalisation of coercive surveillance, and the erosion of constitutional protections, primarily through the expansion of practices like no-knock raids and asset forfeiture. Analysing this expansion is central to debates concerning police accountability and the role of the state in civil society.
Global Governance and Sovereignty: Internationally, the War on Drugs has become a justification for intervention, foreign aid conditionalities, and militarized repression in producer nations. The research offers a critique of the global drug control regime, examining how U.S.-led policies have destabilised states in Latin America, fuelled transnational organized crime, and undermined national sovereignty.
Moral Panic Theory (Cohen, Goode & Ben-Yehuda): This theory will be used to analyse the media and political construction of drug crises (e.g., the crack panic, the fentanyl panic). It demonstrates how agents of social control, media, and moral entrepreneurs sensationalise drug use, creating exaggerated threats to societal values that justify disproportional and severe punitive responses, targeting specific racial and economic "folk devils."
Critical Criminology and Racial Governance (Hall et al., Alexander, Wacquant): This perspective treats drug policy as an instrument of state power used to manage social disorder and maintain economic and racial hierarchies.
Drawing on scholars like Michelle Alexander, the research will examine the War on Drugs as a "New Jim Crow," arguing that its function is less about public safety and more about the formal, systematic control of marginalised populations in the post-civil rights era, thereby implementing a project of punitive neoliberalism.
Zemiology (The Social Harm Perspective): This is the central analytical tool for assessing the policy's outcomes. Zemiology shifts the focus from "crime" (a legal category) to "harm" (a wider category of suffering).
It will be used to quantify the suffering generated directly by the enforcement system—deaths during raids, contamination from prohibition-induced market volatility, loss of housing and employment, and state-induced environmental damage—demonstrating why the state itself is the primary producer of social harm.
