ABSTRACT
The Caribbean drug phenomenon revolves around four separate but related issues: drug production; consumption and abuse; trafficking; and money laundering. Economic pressures, the lucrativeness of the drug market, and the "balloon effect" of countermeasures in Belize, Jamaica, and Latin America are among reasons that other Caribbean countries have taken to significant marijuana production. The problem of narcotics consumption and abuse in the Caribbean involves mainly marijuana and cocaine, with heroin becoming problematic in some places. The formal institutions, political behavior, and cultural values of democratic governance have relatively deep roots and a long tradition in the Commonwealth Caribbean. For many people in the United States the impact of Caribbean drug problems is merely collateral, but to the people of the Caribbean, the impact is direct. This chapter presents an analysis to suggest that drugs present some clear and present dangers to democracy in the Caribbean.
