Before Risk Becomes Visible: What May Be Hidden Behind the Legal?

My relationship with the issue of drugs did not begin with professional analysis.
It began much earlier.
While I was still in high school, I first heard about marijuana and heroin. Cocaine was also known, but at that time it was less common and less accessible in the environment I was familiar with. For me, however, heroin and marijuana were the substances I most clearly associated with what I was seeing and hearing around me.
At that time, a young man from our community died from a heroin overdose.
That was approximately three decades ago.
I also began noticing changes among some young people around me, changes in mood, behavior, social interaction, and the way they related to others. At that age, I did not have the terminology I use today. But I was already observing something important:
Risk often becomes visible through changes before it becomes visible through consequences.
Together with several friends, we decided to do something that was not necessarily common for people our age.
We went to a police station.
We wanted to share information we had heard about people who were allegedly selling or using drugs.
We did not do this because we wanted to harm anyone.
We did it because we believed that if we knew something and remained silent, we might be missing an opportunity to prevent harm.
I still remember one particular moment from that period.
On the windowsill of the inspector's office were several pots containing cannabis plants. He showed us the leaves, explained what they were, and asked whether they were the same plants we had been talking about.
We said yes.
Later, we returned several times to report information.
What remained with me was not simply the experience itself, but a question that became increasingly important over time:
What happens when a risk is recognized, but the response comes too late or does not come at all?
That question has stayed with me.
And perhaps this is why, when I think about prevention today, I do not look only at the substance.
I look at the environment surrounding the risk.
Who produces it?
Who distributes it?
Who has access to it?
Where are the points of vulnerability?
What happens when something moves from a regulated or permitted space into an illicit one?
Who is monitoring those transitions?
And where could criminal exploitation emerge before it becomes visible?
These questions became even more relevant to me years later.
Around 2019, when public discussion in North Macedonia included the possibility of further expanding the legal framework for cannabis, I remember telling a friend that I was concerned about the potential vulnerabilities that could emerge behind a legal or regulated framework.
My concern was not that every legal framework would inevitably produce criminality.
It was that any system involving a valuable and potentially diverted product would require strong oversight, traceability, and prevention.
Years later, that concern returned to the forefront of my thinking.
On 5 February 2026, amid developments surrounding the seizure of five tonnes of marijuana in Serbia and the subsequent investigation in North Macedonia into the possible connection, I publicly shared my own reflection on the vulnerability of legal or permitted frameworks to illicit exploitation and profit. The five tonnes had been seized in Serbia on 29 January, while North Macedonian authorities had opened a case to establish the facts and circumstances of any connection with the country.
I did not see that case as proof that every regulated framework creates criminality.
I saw it as a reminder of a preventive question that had already concerned me for years:
What vulnerabilities can exist behind what appears to be legally permitted?
That question connects my personal experience from adolescence with my present criminological and preventive perspective.
Something being legal in one context does not automatically mean that every activity surrounding it is free from risk.
A regulated market can still contain vulnerabilities.
A permitted product can still be diverted.
A legitimate supply chain can still become a point of exploitation.
And where there is an opportunity for significant illicit profit, criminal actors may attempt to identify and exploit weaknesses in the system.
This does not mean that every legal market is criminal.
It does not mean that every medical user represents a risk.
And it does not mean that regulation itself creates criminality.
The preventive question is different:
What vulnerabilities could exist within the system, and are we recognizing them early enough?
That distinction matters.
Over time, I came to understand that early information can have value even when it does not yet constitute proof of a crime.
A change in behavior may be a signal.
A repeated pattern may be a signal.
An unusual connection between people, places, access, supply, and behavior may be a signal.
One signal does not establish a conclusion.
But several signals, when properly contextualized, may justify closer attention.
This is the principle behind what I call Early Risk Intelligence.
It is not about predicting that a crime will happen.
It is not about treating suspicion as proof.
And it is not about labeling people based on isolated observations.
It is about recognizing, connecting, and contextualizing early indicators of vulnerability before they develop into more serious patterns of harm.
For me, prevention begins with a simple but demanding question:
What could become a risk if nobody is looking for it?
By the time a risk becomes obvious, the opportunity for early intervention may have already narrowed.
The goal, therefore, is not to wait for the crisis to explain the warning signs.
The goal is to recognize the warning signs while prevention still has a choice.

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