Drug Trade

Women are present wherever illegal drugs are grown, processed, sold, stored, trafficked, bought, and consumed. However, research has found that women participate to a lesser extent than men and they occupy the most marginal positions in the drug trade. Over the last decade, the number of women imprisoned for drug offenses has risen at a faster rate than it has for men. Many women imprisoned for drug violations are foreign nationals who were “drug mules.” These are people who carry illegal drugs-usually cocaine and heroin-which have been paid for by someone else, across international borders. This includes all methods of concealment, such as swallowing drugs in capsules, strapping the drugs to the body and concealing them in the luggage. The most common method of concealment is in luggage. Drug [Page 429]mules are sometimes referred to as couriers. When caught, they face particular difficulties as a result of being imprisoned far from home.

The drug trade is difficult to research. The market relies on secrecy for its success. Also, international markets span continents and may not have any fixed geographic base, making reliable information patchy at best. Furthermore, since research has focused primarily on men, less is known about women. Since the 1990s, research has examined the prevalence and role of women in the international drug trade. Research is clustered into two opposing positions outlined by Lisa Maher in Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market. From one perspective, women in the drug trade are powerless victims driven by poverty and drug addiction. On the other, women are active actors driven by ambition for money and independence, much like their male counterparts. In her book, Maher points out that both of these explanations are overly simplistic. Her research set the agenda for the future. Through in-depth, ethnographic research she showed how multiple inequalities such as gender, ethnicity and class are reproduced in the drug trade. She also demonstrated that women's presence in drug markets should not be interpreted as participation, much less equal participation.