Flashback

Drugs and Dealing in the Golden Age of the London Rave Scene

Jennifer Ward

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000151824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Antropologia

This book is a detailed and close examination of the rave club drugs market as it took place in nightclubs, dance parties, pubs and bars and among friendship networks in London, in the mid to late 1990s. It focuses on the organizational features of drugs purchasing and selling and differentiates anonymous drugs trading in public nightclub settings, from selling among extended networks of friends and others. The stories of different people and friendship groups illustrate the varied drug selling roles and highlight the enterprise and entrepreneurship supporting their involvement. Told from the perspective of author's own membership in this night-time leisure culture, and embracing the disciplines of urban sociology and cultural criminology, this book contributes to our knowledge of recreational drugs markets and night-time leisure cultures. It will be of interest to students and academics with interests in these fields, as well as the many other people whose lives became a part of this vibrant leisure scene.

Chapter 1

Introduction: rave club culture

For British youth ecstasy has become a milestone on the road to adulthood like cutting your teeth, riding a bike and losing your virginity. (Wright 1998: 231)

An exaggeration? Maybe, but it was without doubt that the emergence of the rave club culture in the UK in the late 1980s, and its ongoing transformations throughout the 1990s had a major impact on the drug taking behaviour of British youth (Gilman 1991, 1994; Newcombe 1991; McDermott 1993; Collin 1997). Going out ‘clubbing’ and taking drugs became a regular feature of many young peoples’ lives. It could safely be stated that by the mid 1990s drug use in the UK was widespread (Collin 1997). An array of drugs made up people’s drug using repertoires, though ‘ecstasy’ and later cocaine were by far the most popular (Riley and Hayward 2004). A knock-on effect of this widespread drugs consumption was the large numbers of people who became involved in selling them. Whether they perceived themselves to be drug dealing or not, many people’s selling activities were at a frequency and level which constituted ‘dealing’.

This book is informed by an ethnographic study of drugs use and drugs dealing as it occurred within different leisure venues and among different friendship networks participating in the London rave club culture. The research was carried out over a five-year period from the mid to late 1990s (1993–1998). Participant observation techniques were employed to conduct the study; a style that took the author out socialising in numerous London nightclubs, dance parties, house parties, ‘chill-out’ sessions, ‘after-club’ parties, bars and pubs, people’s houses, and among interconnected friendship networks where drugs were being bought and sold, consumed and discussed. From this lengthy and detailed investigation, unique insights were gained into drug selling in London’s clubland and the careful organisation and interactions that surrounded the supply and trade in ecstasy and other dance drugs.

Various studies have examined aspects of this leisure culture, such as the significance and meaning it played in the lives of those involved, yet little work has paid attention to the income generation and economic activity connected to it. This book fills this gap. It focuses on the organisational features of drug selling and purchasing in different settings and social arenas and emphasises the enterprise and entrepreneurship that underpinned this activity. Rave club participants are illustrated as capitalising on the money-making opportunities generated through the widespread demand for drugs from within this leisure culture.

Drug selling is differentiated by trade in the more risky public domain such as in nightclubs and dance parties, and in the safer confines of the private domain, among extended networks of social and friendship group contacts. Different people are focused upon to highlight the various positions and roles they occupied in the drug selling and distribution process.

The camaraderie that supported rave club participation greatly assisted drug selling activities to expand; sometimes into thriving commercial operations. Friends put friends in touch with people they knew who were dealers, and people nurtured useful social contacts that aligned them to a drug supply. This was added to by the busy nature of the London urban setting which provided multiple contacts and assisted drugs trading activity to be disguised within its general lively milieu and vibrant form.

The book concludes with the argument that the construct of ‘friends’ was a useful one to adopt, in that it neutralised drug selling operations so they could be conceived of instead as set-ups that provided for friends’ drugs needs. When scrutinised more closely, friends were often great in number and were sometimes people met in a club the night before, and whom the seller barely knew.

This ethnographic study makes an important contribution to the existing body of information on drugs market organisation, and makes a significant addition to the so far limited evidence base of recreational drugs markets.

Ethnography

The term ethnography is assigned to many types of qualitative research, and ethnographic studies exist in numerous forms (Pearson 1992; Armstrong 1993; Hobbs 2001). My style follows in the tradition of ethnographies emanating from the ‘Chicago School’ of the 1930s and 1940s. This approach has its roots in anthropology and applies the technique of participant observation to better understand the social and cultural milieu that people’s lives are lived out within. The method elicits detailed information by being immersed in a social setting for an extended time period, locating oneself as close to the activity as possible in order to develop a deep understanding of the culture, the group, or the community under study (Hobbs and May 1993; Hammersley and Atkinson 1995; Bryman 2001).

Ethnographic participant observation is a highly relevant method in the study of illicit drug use and drugs dealing populations (Power 1989). Due to their illegal nature these are commonly concealed activities and detail surrounding their occurrence can be difficult to obtain. An effective way of attaining information is to become immersed in the drug user’s social world where the actions of users and sellers can be observed at close hand. There are some well-known drugs ethnographies which have employed the Chicago School style of research and which provide rich insights into the workings of illicit drug markets and scenes. Some of the earlier classics include Becker’s famous study of marijuana users (1953), and Polsky’s study of the Greenwich Village ‘beat scene’ (1967 [1998]).¹ These classic studies have been the influence behind a number of other insightful ethnographies of drug selling set-ups in the latter part of the twentieth century.² (Rosenbaum 1981; Adler 1985; Williams 1989; Waldorf et al. 1991; Taylor 1993; Bourgois 1995; Maher 1997; Jacobs 1999; Pearson 2001, among others).

My research follows in the ethnographic tradition of the Chicago School. It involved immersing myself within the London rave club culture, over an extended time period, from where the social interactions and processes at the heart of club floor and social network drug selling operations were observed.

The study is distinct in that there has not been an ethnographic account of the ecstasy drug-using culture and economy. There are ethnographies of street-level heroin and crack cocaine using and selling scenes, and social network observations of cocaine-using groups, which provide valuable insights into drugs market organisation. Yet to date there is not an ethnography of the ecstasy drug culture and the drug distribution systems that accompany it. There are Silverstone’s (2003) and Sanders’ (2005, 2006) ethnographies undertaken as members of staff within the walls of the London nightclubs they worked. From this they provide vivid detail of the interplay between nightclub security staff and ecstasy and cocaine selling operations. My work is an ethnographic account set in different rave club venues, among overlapping friendship networks, and was carried out over an extended time period. From this a rare view is offered into the processes and interactions that underpinned nightclub drug selling and social network dealing arrangements, and in this way it fills a vital gap in knowledge of rave club and recreational drugs markets.

Theoretical foci

The field observations of rave club drugs trading are analysed within a drugs market framework. This enables links to previous research, such as the way drug distribution systems have been conceived of as ‘open’ and ‘closed’ systems of operation, typically connected to ease of access to the individual (Edmunds et al. 1996; May et al. 2000; May and Hough 2004). These conceptions have mostly been applied to street-level heroin and crack cocaine scenes. Nonetheless they have applicability to this recreational drugs market.

‘Open’ drugs markets are defined as fixed-site geographical locations open to any buyer, with no need for prior introduction to the seller, and carrying few other barriers to access. Closed markets are ones in which access is limited to known and trusted participants (Edmunds et al. 1996). In recognition at the growth in nightclub and pub-based drug selling alongside the rave club culture, May et al. (2000) defined a third system sitting astride open and closed systems. These were referred to as ‘semi-open’ systems of operation where sellers would generally do business in the absence of a prior introduction, provided the ‘buyer looks the part’ (May et al. 2000: 6).

A similar differentiation to the open and closed conceptualisation can be drawn in relation to the rave club drugs market I studied. There was not an open street-level market where dance drugs could be bought. Instead, nightclubs provided this ‘open’ marketplace. Within nightclubs ecstasy tablets and other dance drugs could be purchased without restraint by the general drug taking population. At the time of my research it was possible to turn up at any rave club in the capital and be guaranteed a supply of ecstasy tablets. Anyone, providing they didn’t look like an undercover police officer could purchase.

Drug selling within social and friendship networks could be conceived of as ‘closed’ systems where sales were restricted to familiar and trusted individuals, though as I will go on to point out, social network drug selling was in fact a relatively open system of distribution. These two definitions frame the drugs dealing set-ups observed in my study.

In addition to this broad drugs market framework the central themes of enterprise and entrepreneurship, friendship and functionality and the London urban setting, underline the analysis. A key theme running through this book is the enterprising nature of rave club participants. It is argued they were economic actors who seized both the legal and illegal money-making opportunities generated through this leisure culture. Rave club participants capitalised on the widespread demand for drugs by becoming involved in the sale and purchase of them. Moreover, they tapped into the legal economic opportunities being generated through this expanding night-time culture, by becoming leisure entrepreneurs running nightclubs and working as DJs. In this way they could be viewed as active economic agents involved in the production of the culture and economy of which they were a part.

A related concept is the way drug selling set-ups functioned as ‘alternate work’ and meaningful activity, and these themes have been applied in other studies of drug selling (Preble and Casey 1969; Adler 1985; Johnson et al. 1985, 2000; Williams 1989; Waldorf et al. 1991; Bourgois 1995; Ruggiero and South 1995, 1997, among others). Some of the characters I write about had left school with few qualifications and lacked skills to enter the labour market at anything other than the level of menial low-paid jobs. Drugs dealing served as a useful alternative. Others though combined their rave drug selling lifestyles alongside professional employment and conventional lives.

A theme that interweaves with drugs dealing as alternate work is borrowed from Ruggiero and South’s work (1995, 1997). This takes the notion of ‘crime as work’, but adds an analysis of the urban city environment. They note that with a large population size, and transient and anonymous make-up, multiple work type opportunities are provided, which span both legal and illegal economic spheres. This construct is enhanced by earlier works developed within urban sociology on city cultures, specifically the way human relationships and interactions in large urban settings comprise loose social ties due to the size and density of city populations. Relationships in large cities are seen as more functional and anonymous than those of more traditional close-knit communities (Simmel 1903 [2002]; Spykman 1926; Tönnies 1955; Karp et al. 1991). There is little more recent literature to draw upon that applies this understanding. Yet, I draw on this and argue the size and nature of the London urban setting greatly facilitated the drug selling set-ups I observed, and sometimes the fleeting, functional and economic relations that underpinned this drugs trade.

Another issue that runs through the stories of the different characters involved in drug using and selling lifestyles is that of shifting and multiple identities, as theorised within understandings of late-modern society (Giddens 1991). Here the notion is that we are no longer bound by fixed identities traditionally linked to social class background, but that we occupy multiple identities shaped through a range of lifestyle choices and options. These different identities are drawn on in diverse contexts and are used to shape our self expression. Many of the people observed in this study came from middle-class social backgrounds, who in addition to living ‘deviant’ drug-using and selling lifestyles, held conventional jobs and positions of responsibility. In this way they can be seen as oscillating between two identities; occupying a deviant one in one sphere of their lives and a conventional identity in others. Some though were from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds and the ability to shift identities was a more limited undertaking.

Introductory chapter and book content

This introductory chapter provides the contextual background to the study. A broad overview of the rave club culture since it first emerged in the UK is laid out. The rave club culture underwent a number of transformations and exists in a very different form today to when it first emerged, and indeed to when my field observations were carried out. This is to the extent where it can be questioned whether a rave club culture still exists (Anderson 2009). Nevertheless, a culture of going out clubbing and taking drugs has remained a constant pastime, and continues to underpin the current night-time leisure scenes occurring across city centres in the UK today (Webster et al. 2002; Greater London Alcohol and Drug Alliance 2003, 2007). In this way, it can be argued the insights revealed from my field observations in the mid to late 1990s bear resemblance to the drug using scenes occurring today. Also included in this chapter is an overview of the different ways the rave culture has been analysed and understood.

The following chapters are divided up to present a detailed account of drug use and drug selling within the London rave club scene. These involve a broad overview of the London rave club culture at the time my research was carried out with descriptions of some of the venues and social environments my observations were made within (Chapter 2). The drug use styles of the different interlinked friendship networks are described in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the organisational features of drug purchasing and selling as it occurred in public nightclub venues and in private social network styles of selling. The safety strategies adopted by sellers in order to avoid being caught are interwoven with the material in these chapters. Chapter 6 examines the role women played in the drug selling process. Women’s position within drugs markets are typically depicted as passive yet from my observation of the rave drugs market it was evident that women played active and central roles. They were not often in front-line positions but played important peripheral roles. Chapter 7 discusses the ease with which drug selling set-ups were entered into and scaled-up beyond what people had initially intended. But, the obstacles some of them faced in their attempts to move away from drug selling lifestyles are noted. The concluding chapter looks at the later lives of some of the people written about in the book and summarises the field observations within a framework incorporating notions of illegal enterprise an...