ABSTRACT
The primary concern of this essay is to document and analyse the use of coca, tobacco, beer and yagé (a hallucinogenic drink prepared from the bark of Banisteriopsis caapi vines) among the Barasana, a group of Tukanoan-speaking Amerindians living in north-west Amazonia on the frontier between Colombia and Brazil.1 However, it is also intended to stimulate reflection on how anthropologists, historians and other scholars might contribute more widely to debates concerning ‘drugs’. It is here that I shall begin.2
