Arenas of Drug Transactions: Adolescent Cannabis Transactions in England—Social Supply

The issue of the social supply of illicit drugs is an important one because it delineates a separate category of “dealing,” whereby friends supply or facilitate supply to other friends. Supply of this nature has been argued to be sufficiently different to “dealing proper” to justify a different criminal justice approach in relation to it. This has been argued to be particularly true regarding social supply among young people who use substances such as cannabis. This research involved interviews with 192 cannabis users in six (three rural, three urban) locations in England. Most were exclusively cannabis users. Nearly half (45%) had been involved in some form of supply, and 78% reported sharing their cannabis with others. Nearly all supply events were between friends within a close age range. The findings suggest that there is little contact by young cannabis users to the wider drug market and that it may be better to understand this activity as taking place in an “arena of transaction” rather than seeing it as an extension of the normally conceived drug market. We argue that there is sufficient difference within this arena of transaction from the wider drug market for most activity there to be dealt with less punitively by the criminal justice system.