From Drug Trafficking to Human Trafficking
Expansion of Carceral and Racialized Governance through Protectionist Rhetoric
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17534655 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A De Shalit (0000-0003-0743-2722, University of Windsor, corresponding author), Liam Michaud (0000-0002-2091-442X, York University), Michelle Lesley Annett (0000-0002-6638-8592, St. Francis Xavier University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Drug Problems (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0091-4509 • E-ISSN: 2163-1808 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00914509261445118 |
| OpenAlex | W7155560146 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
The criminalization of illicit/unregulated drug distribution as “drug trafficking” has grown increasingly entangled with rhetoric and allegations of “human trafficking,” producing a convergence of how trafficking across policy domains is understood and regulated by the state. This commentary traces three critical parallels across state drug and human trafficking frameworks: (1) racialized constructions of the “trafficker,” (2) erasure of structural determinants of participation in informal economies, and (3) reliance on binary victim–perpetrator representations. The commentary draws on empirical research based primarily in Ontario, Canada, that involved 41 interviews with people who use drugs charged with drug offences, frontline harm reduction workers, criminal defense lawyers, and drug policy experts as a point of departure to interrogate wider structural and discursive trends in the governance of criminalized economies. Our argument is twofold: first, that the premise of “the trafficker” and use of “trafficking” as an organizing framework produces various harms across different sites of policy and practice, and second, that policymakers and harm reduction practitioners must resist the growing discursive slippage that entangles drug and human trafficking in the name of protection. Resisting trafficking frameworks is thus a policy imperative, as they erode fragile rights safeguards, consolidate carceral and racialized governance regimes, and foreclose alternative approaches that address the structural conditions shaping involvement in drug economies
Argument (complex analysis) · Corporate governance · Criminalization · Harm reduction · Human rights · Parallels · Rhetoric · Victimisation · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Sex work and related issues
Sex, slaves and citizens
Reframing Public Policy
“The Law Doesn’t Protect Me”
“They have their security, we have our community”
Getting Past "the Pimp"
Sexualized Nationalism and Federal Human Trafficking Consultations
Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism
Knowledge Mobilization by Provincial Politicians
Harms of third party criminalisation under end-demand legislation
The Canadian war on drugs
Decriminalization thresholds for drug possession
Necropolitics of the North
Race, cannabis and the Canadian war on drugs
Characteristics of Injection Drug Users Who Participate in Drug Dealing
Butterfly
Vulnerability in Domestic Discourses on Trafficking
Beyond Liberalism
Child protection as surveillance of African American families
Racialized, Gendered, and Sensationalized
Courting Victims
Prosecuting Overdose
Lessons Learned
Criminalization Causes the Stigma”
Overpoliced and Underrepresented
The War on Drugs That Wasn’t
The Law is too Grey
An understanding of poverty from those who are poor
Beyond Doing No Harm
Racial Disproportionality and Disparities in the Child Welfare System
Amongst agaish
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |