ABSTRACT
Drug trading, retailing, and dealing as entrepreneurial criminality related to the availability of drugs and their widespread acquisition and supply throughout Britain. Black young people have been stereotyped for many years for their supposed involvement with the illegal drugs trade, whereas the involvement of British Pakistanis is said to be relatively recent. Although there is some truth that in recent years the involvement of British Pakistani Muslim drug dealers has increased, our interest in their entrepreneurial skills, seeking moneymaking opportunities and their adaptation to, and chasing the most profitable drug markets, belies deeper motivation and opportunity. They struggle to obtain work, so there are no legitimate avenues to prosperity. Deprivation is a key factor in the creation of this Black economy, with participants trapped in a situation from which they see no escape. Lack of professional qualifications and the inward-looking sense of obligation to the community restrict them to neighbourhood. Religious, family, cultural and traditional obligations mean that they cannot realistically leave their area. Though stigmatised and regarded as outcasts by mainstream society, they demonstrate many outstanding qualities: not just entrepreneurial skills but intense, if fractious, loyalty, a strong sense of duty to family, and a strong, if eclectic, moral code. In many ways they are admirable though their good qualities are rarely visible to themselves and even less often visible to the outside world. Most of all though, drug dealing is a form of self-employment that ‘protects’ them from the need to compete in a mainstream labour market or commercial environment which discriminates against them as British Pakistani Muslims.
