Leah Moyle

Research interests

I am currently studying for an ESRC funded PhD which aims to explore how the social supply of illicit drugs should be understood in relation to drug dealing (proper).

The research has two main aspects, the first looks at social supply and aims to explore how social supply develops within young recreational users, what roles are adopted by suppliers (e.g broker, seller for no profit, user-dealer), how early episodes of social supply transpose onto later practices of social supply when adult and furthermore how far this behaviour fits into a normalisation framework. The ultimate aim is to build a working definition of the concept and consider to what extent it should be viewed as a separate behaviour to drug dealing (proper).

The second aspect of the research concentrates on the concept of 'minimally commercial supply' (MCS). This relates to (heroin/crack cocaine) dealers who have drug dependency issues and supply in order to satisfy their habit, receiving limited profit. Here, arguably, dealing is one of few options for homeless addicts apart from acquisitive crime/prostitution. Again, the idea is to build a definition of the concept using interviews with heroin users from the local community. We want to debate how far it can be considered as drug dealing (proper) and whether it should be considered as a separate conduct and thus in Court if it  is reasonable for MCS be recognised as a offence in its own right.

Links
Drug and Alcohol Research Unit (DARU) https://sites.google.com/site/uopdaru/home