CONCLUSION: From stalemate to progress

More research is needed so that the authors have a better understanding of the full gamut of activities related to the policing of drugs. In particular, empirically grounded case studies undertaken across the world provide an excellent way of documenting the nuanced and complex nature of drugs policing. There needs to be more of these, especially from the Global South, to continue to develop our understanding of how drugs policing operates, the outcomes associated with it, and how things can be done differently. With the exception of cryptomarkets and drug trafficking in the Caribbean concerned with policing people who use drugs and local distribution at the retail level of the market. It is worth noting Fassin’s assertion that what police organisations have difficulty with research being carried out on the police, and, more specifically, this research being ethnographic in nature’.