From Drug Trafficking to Human Trafficking

Expansion of Carceral and Racialized Governance through Protectionist Rhetoric

Dados Bibliográficos

ID17534655
AutoresA De Shalit (0000-0003-0743-2722, University of Windsor, autor correspondente), Liam Michaud (0000-0002-2091-442X, York University), Michelle Lesley Annett (0000-0002-6638-8592, St. Francis Xavier University)
Ano2026
Data de publicação2026-04-24
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoContemporary Drug Problems (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-4509 • E-ISSN: 2163-1808
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00914509261445118
OpenAlexW7155560146
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas46

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