Preview

Junkie Business: the Evolution and Operation of a Heroin Dealing Network

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2752 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Junkie Business: the Evolution and Operation of a Heroin Dealing Network
1) Brief Overview of the Book Lee D. Hoffer’s “Junkie Business: The Evolution and Operation of a Heroin Dealing Network” is an ethnography that details the buying and dealing of the highly addictive drug, heroin, in the particularly homeless area of Denver, Colorado called “Larimer” from 1995 to the year 2000. The majority of the book focuses on the partnership of two heroin dealers, Kurt and Danny, and examines their daily lifestyles and the transitional periods they faced during their operations. On a much broader level, Hoffer wanted to characterize the heroin dealing occurring on the consumer-oriented side of the heroin dealing business, as well as understand the evolution of Kurt and Danny’s operations. Hoffer’s virtually unlimited access to Denver’s heroin operations and the friendships he formed with Kurt and Danny were unprecedented in the world of ethnographic research on illegal drug dealing. As a result, Hoffer was able to better understand the deep-rooted social aspects involved in the dealer-customer relationship. Hoffer sets the foundation of the remainder of the book in chapter one by first discussing the “War on Drugs” in the United States and goes as far as saying, “the United States has realistically lost this war … Current drug policies are unrealistic and even counterproductive” (Hoffer 2). These conclusions are developed throughout the book, but are the direct result of his personal understandings of Kurt and Danny’s heroin operations, which escalated dramatically during a time in which the police and community as a whole were cracking down on and cleaning up the rampant heroin usage in Larimer and the homeless that populated this area. He details the extremely different backgrounds of Kurt and Danny, but emphasizes how important this is to their eventual success as heroin dealers. Further, the motivations behind the decision to sell heroin and the fundamentals of such an operation are understood by Hoffer as he develops a personal
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Lori Arnold Is a Crook
    • 1723 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Lori Arnold Is a Crook

    After the meatpacking plant closed, farms started going out of business, and people began leaving Oelwein, Iowa, the town was left in a state of economic distress. To fill the gap, workers began using and/or selling methamphetamine in what would be known as “mom and pop” meth labs. Biker gangs like The Sons of Silence, The Grim Reapers, and The Hell’s Angels took the opportunity to bring in their own meth and sell it to the vulnerable and increasingly desperate people of Fayette County. Along with the biker gangs, other drug-trafficking organizations, such as The Mexican Mafia, also took advantage of the worsening situation. It is because of these people and organizations that Oelwein’s “meth problem” became an epidemic and has affected the lives of people, not just in Iowa or the Midwest, but all over the United States. Out of all the possible suspects, the person most responsible for Oelwein’s meth problem is the large-scale, Iowa-specific meth dealer, Lori Arnold. Without her enterprise, connections to other drug-trafficking organizations and opportunistic senses, the spread of meth into Oelwein would have come much more slowly, if it came at all.…

    • 1723 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Bourgeois And Schoenberg's Righteous Dopedfiend
    • 232 Words
    • 1 Page

    Bourgeois And Schoenberg's Righteous Dopedfiend

    Righteous Dopedfiend, a novel by Philippe Bourgeois and Jeff Schoenberg, describes the lives and experiences of individuals in the city of San Francisco, California. Through an ethnographic study, Bourgeois and Schoenberg were able to follow the everyday occurrences of at least two dozen individuals who are referred to as the ‘Edgewater Homeless ‘community or network of individuals. The ‘Edgewater Homeless’ community resides in the streets of San Fransisco and rely heavily upon the use of injecting heroin or smoking crack. Righteous Dopefiend explains the stories of everyday life occurrences of some individuals in this community in the aspect of drug use, working to establish income, developing and maintaining relationships, challenges, and…

    • 232 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Street pharm essay(why you should buy this book)
    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Street pharm essay(why you should buy this book)

    Have you ever wondered what the life of a young drug-dealer is like? Well look no further, this is the book you have to read!…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Drug Wars and Coffee Houses Paper
    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Drug Wars and Coffee Houses Paper

    Cited: Mares, David R. Drug Wars and Coffee Houses: The Political Economy of the International Drug Trade. Washington, D.C.: CQ, 2005. Print.…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    History of Heroin
    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages

    History of Heroin

    Heroin is named after the German word for hero, heroisch. Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as black tar heroin. Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is cut with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.…

    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Carl Hart's High Price
    • 1093 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Carl Hart's High Price

    Hart is able to connect with readers on the hardships of life and how a single choice can influence your entire life. I originally chose this book to inform myself on drugs in today’s society and what influences the use of them. After reading the book, I was able to understand what causes drug use and how what we learn by the media is somewhat incorrect. This memoir is truly well written and includes a unique way of writing that continuously keeps the reader active and engaged in the…

    • 1093 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Righteous Dopefiend Analysis
    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Righteous Dopefiend Analysis

    In the 1980s, the social crisis of homelessness has prevailed in the United States. As the homeless population climbed rapidly, the public-health problem was concerned. In Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg’s photo-ethnography, “Righteous Dopefiend,” these two anthropologists followed the daily lives of several heroin addicts living under Edgewater Boulevard, a homeless community in San Francisco for over 10 years. Through the unbiased, documentary-style of research on this homeless community, we see a community based on individuals’ shared culture of drug addiction and homelessness though these individuals have different ethnic backgrounds. In addition, Philippe…

    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Black Males and the Injustice of the Penal System
    • 2435 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Black Males and the Injustice of the Penal System

    Riley, Jack (1997) Crack, Powder Cocaine, and Heroin: Drug Purchase and Use patterns in six U.S. Cities, National Institute of Justice, p. 1.…

    • 2435 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Claire Sterk Fast Lives
    • 1292 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Claire Sterk Fast Lives

    In Claire’s Sterk’s book, “Fast Lives: women who used crack cocaine”, she uses information from observation, conversations, interviews and group discussions to explain how using crack affects active users. She also shows how they started using, how they survived, how they developed and maintained relationships with friends and family, and how they were mothers and drug users at the same time. In addition, Sterk started Project FAST, the Female Atlanta Study to identify the impact of drug use patterns on lives of active female users. In this study, most of the women’s stories are similar but yet different in many ways to each other. While curiosity and peer pressure caused these women to experiment with drugs, others were introduced to it by friends. While prostitution was frequently used to support their drug usage, many other women participated in the drug business or credit card fraud or shoplifted. Another similar thing they share is that they knew the negative images of crack cocaine users. They are expressed more negatively than their male counterparts as “being a drug user and a woman are generally seen as incompatible social roles” (Sterk, 4). As one of the goals of this study was to have a greater understanding of the lives of female crack cocaine users, Sterk had intentions to challenge the popular perception of crack cocaine addicts and I believe she did not succeeded in her pursuit.…

    • 1292 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    An Unfair Drug War
    • 2110 Words
    • 9 Pages

    An Unfair Drug War

    Drug production and drug dealing today has become a substantial source of revenue. Whether for making up budget deficits or for the enrichment of certain individuals, population groups, firms or even countries, drugs are distributed worldwide. Drugs also involve economically marginalized sectors of the population, such as peasant producers or some small-scale drug dealers, criminal organizations or certain closely-knit sectors of society in the world of business or State institutions. The recycling of profits is central to the economy and society in terms of land, real estate and financial assets. It directly involves businesses and financial institutions. The social transformations stemming from the development of the drug economy reveal a growth in the sectors of illegal activity. These issues, which now concern all parts of the world, take different shape from one region and location to another.…

    • 2110 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Drug Trafficking In The United States
    • 234 Words
    • 1 Page

    Drug Trafficking In The United States

    The topic that was chosen is Drug trafficking in the United States. The reason why this topic was chosen was because it is a very big ongoing problem in the United States. There are so many different drugs in the United States none of which are healthy for us. There are smugglers who smuggle in cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana. (www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/drug-trafficking.shtml)…

    • 234 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The Heroin Epidemic
    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Heroin Epidemic

    If one traveled through the small quiet community of Monroe, MI you would probably never think that this town has a drug problem. From the outside it seems like a nice middle class suburb that might be ideal to raise a family. For those that reside here however, they know that there is a growing problem. There aren’t many families that haven’t been affected by heroin addiction in this small town. The drug has literally swept through this county like an angry mob of rioters bringing crime, death, and destruction with it, leaving many people in the community asking, “Why?”…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Drug Trafficking
    • 1849 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Drug Trafficking

    The media represents Mexico drug scene as a replica of the Colombian Model. Mexico did not begin to traffic drugs until sixty years ago before the Colombians decided to get into the trade. There are two different political systems in both countries; the history and the structural relationship of the drug traffickers to the political powers in Mexico. Where did drug trafficking begin and exactly where did it come from. Nowadays, all I hear in the news is that the drugs were traffic through the border of Mexico. Everything is always coming from Mexico, not Colombia or Cuba. How do we stop drug traffickers from crossing drugs across the border. The lack of research that needs to be done to stop the drug traffickers is another reason why the Colombians have picked up on what the Mexican drug traffickers have been doing for the past six decades. The concerns in the drug trafficking is the historical sociology of drug trafficking, the drug use, and the relationship between drug traffickers and the political powers in Mexico. The objective of this paper is to show the comprehensive vision of drug related problems in Mexico since the end of the last century.…

    • 1849 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Opiate Addiction
    • 1229 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Opiate Addiction

    The social effects of opiate addiction are felt by those who may have never even seen more than an image of heroin. For example; “In an early study, for example, Inciardi reported that a cohort of 239 male heroin addicts from Miami committed 80,644 criminal acts during the 12 months before being interviewed (Inciardi, 1979).”. (Strain and Stitzer, 2006) In part, this is due to the problems associated with the severe withdrawal symptoms that begin about 18 hours after the last use, and the result that addicts will do almost anything to avoid them. These include sweating, vomiting, insomnia, cold sweats, pain in the limbs, yawning, sneezing, severe bone and muscle aches, diarrhea, stomach cramps and fever.…

    • 1229 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Social Life Of Smokers: Analysis
    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Social Life Of Smokers: Analysis

    ‘The social life of smokers: Processes of exchange in a heroin marketplace,’ (Dwyer, R. 2011) is a controversial study about the development of heroin users and dealers, exposing their everyday lives, practices, and struggles. Dwyer argues that illegal drug marketplaces are formulated through 'complex and dynamic social processes and relations.' However, he accentuates the prevailing notions of drugs and markets that we perceive as 'driven by the mechanism of supply and demand, ignoring the fundamental social relations and tend to reify the 'market' as an object to be measured rather than a process to be understood.' (Dwyer, R. 2011, p.19). This text will essentially examine the issues related with the process of exchange in a heroin marketplace, the significance of trade in heroin, the perspective of illicit drugs as having multidimensional social implications, with their practice fundamentally implanted in broader social contexts, and the complex social processes and relations that encompass the production and consumption of heroin. An analysis of various sources will presume that the process of exchange of cigarettes with research participants reflects the…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics