Mapping the experience of drug dealing risk environments: An ethnographic case study

Abstract

Background: The traditional approach to understanding the economic dimensions of risk environments is to examine the forces that determine the activities of social actors. Drug dealing poses a particular problem for risk environments as dealing and drug dealers are often thought to be out of the scope of harm reduction interventions. However, local level drug dealing can be an important feature of local economies in marginalised communities, and the sharp distinctions between users and dealers may not always hold. Methods: Ethnographic evidence is used to describe how two drug dealers experience risk. Two domestic spaces, the house of a heroin and amphetamine dealer respectively, are used to..