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13 Trends Org. Crime 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/trndorgc13 and id is 1 raw text is: Trends Organ Crim (2010) 13:1-12 DOI 10.1007/s12117-009-9090-0 Asterix and Obelix in Drugland: an introduction to the special issue on 'drug markets' Georgios A. Antonopoulos - Georgios Papanicolaou Published online: 18 December 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract This paper provides an introduction to the articles bringing forward empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on drug markets, raising questions about the nature of the relationship between the organization of drug markets and the official frameworks surrounding them, and, importantly, about the complexity of this relationship. Keywords Drug markets - Prohibitionism - War on drugs Drug markets are nowadays regarded as the archetypal illegal markets, but this has not always been the case. Illegal drug markets are a relatively recent chapter in a very long history. During the reign of Thutmose IV (around 1400 BC), Akhenaten (around 1350 BC) and Tutankhamen (around 1330-1320 BC) the opium trade in Egypt was flourishing and the Egyptians used to trade opium in Greece and other parts of Europe; this particular commodity was also traded in the Arab Empire, Venice during the great acme of the city, and Britain among numerous other places (see Shearing 2004). Even in the recent past, the drug trade not only was a legitimate but also a highly important economic activity. Diacetylmorphine, for instance, the discovery of chemist C.R. Alder Wright, was taken up by Bayer and was sold as a medicine for a number of illnesses in the late 19th and early 20th century (Shapiro 2004). Established at the turn of the 20th century the Nederlandsche Cocainefabriek was the biggest cocaine producer in the world for about two decades (Zaitch 2002). But for a variety of reasons, including moral and religious ones (see Mena and Hobbs, this issue; Thoumi, this issue), states intervened in drug markets and thus drove significant segments of them into the domain of the illicit and clandestine. Early efforts to control drug use and trade on a local/national level can be found in the mid-to-late 19th century. The Shanghai Opium Conference of 1909 and the subsequent International Opium Convention signed in The Hague in 1912 launched G. A. Antonopoulos (E) - G. Papanicolaou School of Social Sciences & Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, UK e-mail: G.Antonopoulos@tees.ac.uk 4L Springer

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