Dealing, with stress Drug-dealers are finding the always-on culture a chore

T HERE ARE many reasons to avoid a career as a drug-dealer. The industry offers erratic career progression, no pension and low average earnings. Despite a few notable success stories (Pablo Escobar earned enough to enjoy a private zoo with hippos), one often-cited American study found that lower-ranking dealers averaged a meagre $3.30 an hour ($5.80 in today’s money), a lower wage than cleaners. Now there is another reason to just say no: workplace stress.

In conventional business, “you are always anticipating with anxiety the email from your boss that is going to blow up your weekend,” says James Densley, a criminologist at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, who spent years researching gangs in London. Now the always-on culture has reached drug-dealing, and particularly gangs. It has brought with it the same online monitoring techniques used to track delivery riders and warehouse workers, such as GPS tracking, location tags and demands from the boss for frequent check-ins. “The anxiety that we feel as adults in the workplace is sort of amplified,” says Mr Densley. For dealers, “it’s not ‘get down here or you’ll be fired.’ It’s ‘get down here now or you’ll be stabbed.’”

The “toad work” has always squatted on life. Philip Larkin complained that his toad soiled six days of the week, but then the poet didn’t have a smartphone. In the always-on world, more than ever before, workers are struggling to switch off. Increased connectivity, a fashion for “extreme working”—more than 50 hours a week—and now the pandemic have enabled the toad to triumph at all hours. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that those who work from home are likely to do more overtime and work later into the night than those who go out to work.

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