University of Illinois at Chicago Office of Public Affairs Contact: Jeffron Boynes (312) 413-8702; [email protected] June 15, 1998
Inner-city drug dealing is a good example of what management guru Peter Drucker would call entrepreneurship, says a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher.
The business of selling drugs is a major economic force in city neighborhoods, according to a study released today by Dr. John Hagedorn, a professor of criminal justice and one of the nation's top gang researchers. And the methods by which drugs are distributed in poor city neighborhoods are vastly different from the distribution in white suburban areas.
Hagedorn draws his conclusions from a series of studies on established drug-selling businesses in two Milwaukee neighborhoods. He discusses findings from his latest study, based on extensive interviews with former and current drug dealers, in "The Business of Drug Dealing in Milwaukee," a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
Hagedorn looked at two inner-city neighborhoods, one Latino and one African-American. Assisted by "community researchers" - former gang members and drug sellers - he surveyed 28 drug-selling businesses that employed 191 people.
"What I found was a very deep adherence to mainstream values of success and in wanting to get ahead by whatever means they could do it," says Hagedorn. "What I saw were people motivated by the same things you and I are motivated by, trying to figure out what to do. But they had a different set of opportunities available to them."
According to the report, drug sales in poor neighborhoods are part of a growing informal economy that has expanded in response to the loss of good jobs. Such ways of making a living are becoming part of everyday life for many poor people. "These are not a bunch of amoral terrorists out there trying to destroy our communities," Hagedorn says. "These are people trying to figure out how to survive. They don't like it, but they see that's the situation they're in."
Hagedorn notes that, comparatively, the main difference between white, suburban and inner-city drug use is simple: cold, hard economics. While drugs are used as a way to relieve stress and get thrills by people of all walks of life, in the inner-city, drugs are also a major employer of young, minority males.
Much of the report details how poor people in Milwaukee have responded to the loss of steady employment by starting thousands of new, mainly "off-the-books" businesses, which include: car repair and house-painting, child care, hair-cutting, street vending and sales of questionable goods. The most profitable activity in this informal sector of the economy, Hagedorn found, is the business of selling drugs.
The report concludes with a discussion of possible solutions that could be used in reconsidering our current drug policy: continue on our present "War on Drugs" course, which is the most likely policy decision; legalize drugs, which has little chance of adoption; support a jobs program to replace the "War on Drugs," which does not appear to be realistic; or establish a daring yet conservative policy which would include more tolerance for informal economic activity, while also supporting social norms against drug use. Hagedorn hopes to "encourage both conservatives and liberals to engage in rethinking of our nation's and state's drug policies." To be sure, that rethinking would be "based on an understanding of the poor as hard-working, rational human beings who, in the face of distress, are trying to make their own opportunities." Most importantly, Hagedorn admits that efforts must focus on figuring out a better way to channel people away from drugs and into other kinds of legitimate, informal businesses. A complete text of the report is available at http://www.wpri.org.
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