‘Criminaliteit’ als normaliteit

Criminality as normality – About distribution of medicines in Cameroon 1980 This article is based on participant-observational field research in Cameroon in 1980. It originally focused on what happened to sick people and their relatives at the end of the medicine distribution line. However, the investigation led directly to higher levels of the medicine trade: the informal drug seller in markets and general stores, the licensed legal pharmacies, the hospitals and health centres, the National Pharmacy, and finally the shadowy world of policy makers negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies. The ethnography led to an intriguing theoretical observation: What I considered criminal, those involved considered correct and normal. This contribution about criminal medicine supply more than 40 years ago is still relevant for two reasons: the practices are timeless (and therefore also historically interesting) and the medicine supply in Cameroon has changed little since then.