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The Drug Menace to the Caribbean
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15980 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
2,610 Words |
| Author
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Anthony P. Maingot
Anthony P. Maingot is professor of sociology and editor of
Hemisphere magazine at Florida International University in
Miami. |
The Caribbean, although only a minor player in the production of illicit drugs, is not at all a small player in the total picture of the U.S. drug problem. Yet it has taken Caribbean societies far too long to become aware that drugs are not purely an American problem but one that affects them as well.
Only two Caribbean countries are involved in any substantial drug production: Jamaica, which produces less than 1.7 percent of the world's marijuana, and Belize, which accounts for perhaps 0.5 percent. There is no known production elsewhere, or of other types of drugs. The importance of the Caribbean lies in two other assets it possesses that are vital to the drug business: (1) geographical location and (2) expertise in the culture, language, finances and consumption preferences of the United States and Europe.
Its location has led to the area's conversion into a major route for the movement of drugs. Despite the rapid increase in the amount of drugs coming in through Mexico, 70 percent of the cocaine and marijuana entering the Untied States still moves through its Caribbean border.
The second factor gives some Caribbean peoples a relative advantage in offshore banking and sophisticated money-laundering schemes, as well as in organizing criminal gangs of extraordinary efficiency, not to mention brutality. The Jamaican posses (known in the United Kingdom as "yardies") are merely the best known of these.
Fortunately, the previous indifference is giving way to a new consciousness about this intractable problem. Such concern is not only justified, it is long overdue. One example involves Jamaica's most influential pollster, columnist, and public-opinion shaper, Carl Stone. In April 1988, Stone wrote that he found it distressing that in a year when Jamaicans were electing a new government, "we are spending as much time agonizing over petty U.S. gossip about supposed mafia-type links between local politics and drug dons" (Jamaican Weekly Gleaner, April 18, 1988). He called for a discussion of the "real issues."
Exactly one year later, after the Jamaican electorate had democratically elected a new government without any serious discussion of the Jamaican drug problem. Stone changed his tune. His new words reflect the seriousness of the Jamaican situation. The drug dealers, he now says, are "crippling" Jamaica. "The very future and livelihood of this country and its people are at risk." He urged that steps be taken "in a hurry" to stop this
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