ABSTRACT
There are only two illicit substances that are widely used in Jamaica: marijuana (or “ganja,” as it is called locally) and crack cocaine. This chapter describes the use of cannabis as a cheap, available therapy for the treatment of cocaine addiction by working-class women in Kingston, Jamaica. The findings reported here are derived from an ethnographic study of crack-using women in Kingston (Dreher and Hudgins 1992). The purposes of this study were to identify the social and economic conditions that promote and reinforce cocaine use and generate implications for treatment and prevention. Complementing the earlier large-scale opinion survey that had influenced drug policy in Jamaica (Stone 1990), the ethnographic design was deployed to: (1) observe the actual drug-linked behavior of crack using women in the natural settings of home and community, (2) permit a longitudinal examination of the processes embedded in drug careers over several months, and (3) overcome the potential mistrust of investigators that often accompanies research on illegal and socially sensitive activities.
