Dealing in Drugs

This chapter focuses on the nature, structure and, in particular, the harms produced by the global pharmaceutical industry – ‘Big Pharma’. It addresses how the legal products of the pharmaceutical industry are not necessarily less – and can be more – harmful than those drugs designated by states as illegal and subject to criminalization. Given that, it argues that pharmaceutical companies might be viewed as drug dealers, in the literal and the pejorative sense of this term. The chapter considers pharmaceutical harms along a continuum, encompassing: harms that are entirely legal; harms that sit within a grey area between legality and illegality; and harms that are regulated as potentially criminal, but where such regulation is un- or under-enforced. The picture that emerges is that harm and crime is routine, widespread and normalized across the pharmaceutical industry.