It’s little talked about, but women are increasingly in the thick of the "War on Drugs". Women may be less conspicuous drug dealers and traffickers, but women are hardly invulnerable. Conviction  numbers show women’s involment in the drug trade going way up.

In the U.S., from 1986 to 1996, the number of women sentenced to state prison for drug crimes increased ten-fold. Women of color are prosecuted at significantly higher rates.

Even women who don’t use drugs are affected by drug abuse. The mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of drug abusers often enable or hide the abuse of the men and, in doing so, experience social, health and economic disadvantages including domestic violence.

Female drug addicts are often stereotyped as promiscuous, lazy and trapped by their addict male partners. These depictions typify a “pathology and powerlessness” that’s not nessasarily the case.

Although prolific research exists on female drug incarceration, there’s little research  about women’s roles in the illicit drug trade.

Tammy Anderson is Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. She’s the author of the forthcoming book Neither Villain Nor Victim: Empowerment and Agency among Women Substance Abusers.    

When most people think about the illicit drug economy, they think about male drug lords or drug kingpins. The women’s role in the drug economy seems peripheral and victim-like. Jerome asked Tammy how she understood women’s roles in the illicit drug economy…