Illegal Drugs 1 x 2

The involvement of Caribbean youth in drug distribution of marijuana from the mid-1960s to 1981, cocaine hydrochloride powder and crack from 1981 to present, the relationship between the underground economy of drugs and the corporate, capitalist economy is explored. Responding to high rates of unemployment and to other problems, young Caribbean African males established a multimillion dollar marijuana (ganja) trading network which linked cultivators on the islands with exporters/importers and street-level distributors in North American cities. By 1976, its participants had become Rastafarians, or followers of an ideology of self-reliance and indigenous development. They reinvested marijuana revenues to revive various industries. In neighborhoods, marijuana was a "positive vibration" and its distributors were lionized. However, as a child living in Jamaica, by the time I had reached the age of reason, I basically figured out that the marijuana life style was not for me.