NCJ Number
132039
Journal
Transafrica Forum Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Dated: (Fall 1990) Pages: 49-57
Date Published
1990
Length
9 pages
Annotation
The stagflationary effects of U.S. policies together with International Monetary Fund policies in Jamaica and the Commonwealth Caribbean in general have contributed to the increased vulnerability of considerable numbers of Jamaicans to the expanding international drug economy.
Abstract
A review of the capitalist principles of organization and accumulation which characterize the drug underground precedes a discussion of Jamaica's drug economy and its unprecedented scale of political violence. The internationalization of Jamaican ganja, marijuana, clearly undermined a sociocultural configuration of beliefs and practices regulating and giving order and meaning to ganja and ganja-related activities, but research indicates that some measure of noncapitalist-like communalism still exists among segments of Jamaica's ganja growing, trading, and consuming population. Cocaine lacks a comparable indigenous cultural basis, and its association with increased levels of violent crime and with the problem of addiction suggest that cocaine trafficking and consumption operate under exacerbated conditions of normative breakdown. Consequently, Jamaica's crime problem has further escalated. 29 notes