Quantative Study of Ecstasy Sellers in the San Francisco Bay Area

摘要

Due to the nature of the buyer and seller relationships, Ecstasy drug markets challenge our current understandings of drug distribution. We interviewed endividuals who were18 years of age or older and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. We conducted key informant interviews and field observations. Employing ethnographic sampling techniques, we recruited 80 sellers who had sold or exchanged five or more Ecstasy doses five or more times in the six months prior to interview. Interviewees were predominantly White, male, and middle to upper-middle class, housed and in their twenties. All of the interviewees had used Ecstasy, most (93%) before they began selling it. Participants resisted stigmatized drug dealer identities because they were not full time sellers, only sold to friends and did not market or push their drugs. Sellers constructed their own labels calling themselves service providers, enablers or facilitators. Participants relied on their friendships with their customers to protect them from theft, violence or police intervention. With some exceptions, participants knew very little about where their Ecstasy came from or how their suppliers priced their products. Through our interview data and online research we found that Ecstasy manufacturers chose specific symbols for their pill brands to convey messages to consumers about their products. The most frequently cited method for testing Ecstasy was take it yourself (67%). Unlike cocaine or marijuana sales, selling Ecstasy did not increase sellers use. Heavy use increased the likelihood of not feeling the Ecstasy as intensely and experiencing more difficult hangovers. Long-term Ecstasy use was characterized by cycles or phases beginning with peak use periods followed by periods of abstention. Friends motivated them to begin selling Ecstasy, and opportunities to use Ecstasy with their friends kept many in business. Nonetheless, 54 percent reported that they wanted to quit selling citing legal risks, stress, and concern for their customers health. Interviewees were working (88%) or planning careers and a pervasive theme was it was time to grow up, stop taking unnecessary risks and assume the conventional social roles that were awaiting them. Buy and bust strategies may be difficult to implement in markets characterized by social bonding enhanced by the Ecstasy using experience. While these user/seller groups may have been winding down from Ecstasy use and sales, they were becoming interested in powder cocaine as an alternative. Sellers saw cocaine as less of a commitment time wise and without the immediate after effects.