Wheeling and Dealing: An Ethnography of an Upper-Level Drug Dealing and Smuggling Community

by Patricia A. Adler

Book Overview

Wheeling and Dealing is a vivid account of the world inhabited by "wholesale" illicit drug traffickers. Based on six years of participant observation, fieldwork, and extensive interviews in an elite Southern California community of dealers, the book gives a rare glimpse into the decadent yet fascinating "subculture of drug trafficking and unending partying, mixed with occasional cloak-and-dagger subterfuge."

This second edition brings the story up to date by revealing the fate of several of Adler's key informants. By tracing their lives over a fifteen-year span, Adler offers a unique longitudinal perspective on deviant careers and the reintegration of dealers into conventional society. She also analyzes the unintended consequences of the federal government's war on drugs, tying it to the increasing violence and organizational sophistication of drug traffickers and the rise of international cartels.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231081332
• ISBN13: 9780231081337
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Wheeling and Dealing

I thought the book to be very beneficial for a person just wandering what it is all about this book was not a ah lets go out and write a book and comsume some drugs along the way this was a study in the sociology of these people.

LIVIN' LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

For all the questions you've ever had about high level drug smuggling but were deathly afraid to ask anybody...this book is for you! Adler chronicles how smugglers and dealers first entered the drug world, and how they rose to the top, and I do mean top rung of the drug dealing/smuggling community. An excellent study that doesn't read like academia.