While 93% of research activities in Europe focus on researching fields of understanding drug use and demand reduction, only 6% of European research deals with reduction of supply, e.g. different stages of illicit drug supply, including cultivation and production, trafficking and diversion/leakage plus drug markets and distribution. (Buhringer/Farrell/Kraus et al. 2009) This paper addresses the 6% relating to supply reduction and explores dynamics of mobility of upper-level drug dealing in Europe. Along the central research question - How do upper-level drug dealing networks operate in the European Union? - a qualitative case study on one single network has been conducted. This includes about 45 upper-level drug dealers operating in the European Union and mainly involving Austria, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain. Instead of enumerating frequencies, the paper aims to enhance theory on organizational aspects of upper-level drug dealing in Europe.
However, the indepth case study is based on three semi-structured interviews with an imprisoned man convicted for drug-dealing offences and three semi-structured interviews with experts from the Austrian Federal Criminal Agency. As a third data source served legal files on one upper-level drug dealing network, including investigation records, phone tapping protocols, accusations, trial protocols and verdicts. The data is being analyzed with Qualitative Content Analysis (Schreier 2012, Mayring 2002), a method suitable for systematically looking deeper into what the very content of the data includes. This analysis is the first qualitative research in the field of upper-level drug dealing for German speaking countries (Wehinger 2011; Dorn/Levi/King 2005).
Better understanding of the structure and operations of drug markets may contribute to improving the understanding of this complex area as well as provide law enforcement agencies with information on where and when they may focus their activities upon. (Wilson/Stevens 2008)
