Don't map drugs! An introduction to the problematic of drug spatial representation

Abstract

There are many very good reasons not to map drugs, yet we decided to make maps and invite others to do so. To us, the most relevant question is not whether to map drugs or not, but to reflect how to engage in mapping drugs critically, as well as how to share the process of mapping and the critic within this process with our readers. In this presentation, we explain why and how we edited a book about counter-cartographies of drugs, and reflect on the theoretical and methodological issues of combining drug research and counter cartography. We also introduce the concept of “paramap” at the core of this book and of our critical cartographic approach.

Most discourses associate drugs with impurity and illegality We share an urban imaginary consisting of neighborhoods eaten up by drug use and traffic and of shiny party miles of ecstasy in the night-time economy. Drug policies and their spatiality are a highly ideological and sensitive topic. Common drug maps, such as the cartography global routes of drug trafficking from the Global South to the Global North or the cartography of drugs as an urban security issue, shape drugs imaginations and politics. From policing to planning to public health, drug maps, in (re)producing stigmatizing representations of space, contribute to monitoring and criminalizing marginalized groups, enforcing borders. A careful critique of both cartographical issues as drug issues before engaging in drug cartography.

Our visual culture loves to essentialize maps and to fetishize them – as well as it is fascinated by drugs. Therefore, we recommend caution in the way we look at drug maps – we need to de- and reconstruct them.

Don’t map drugs before learning about the harms that cartography can cause and without engaging in cartographic harm reduction. Don’t map drugs because this is far too easy: drugs are a nexus of multidimensional networks and conditions. These social relations and power structures behind the construction of drugs are often neglected.

Instead of mapping drugs, map drug policies and how they deal with space; map the power relationships behind and around the use and trade of psychoactive substances; map the history of drug practices and discourses; map situated emotions, feelings, pleasures; map everyday and political struggles – as we tried with this book.