Crack and the Political Economy of Social Suffering

A comparison of cocaine, crack and heroin epidemics documented through participant-observation methods in the United States and Canada reveals dramatically distinct patterns of abuse across differentially vulnerable population groups. Political economic and cultural forces, rather than pharmacology...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Addiction research & theory 2003-01, Vol.11 (1), p.31-37
Main Author: Bourgois, Philippe
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Canada
Cocaine
Crack-cocaine
Demography
Drug Abuse
Epidemics
Ethnicity
Heroin
Injection Drug Epidemics
Prison Policy
Public Policy
Socio-economic Inequality
United States of America
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Summary:A comparison of cocaine, crack and heroin epidemics documented through participant-observation methods in the United States and Canada reveals dramatically distinct patterns of abuse across differentially vulnerable population groups. Political economic and cultural forces, rather than pharmacology shape the trajectory of drug epidemics. The de facto apartheid of the U.S. inner city and its associated prison industrial complex spawned the massive epidemic of crack smoking in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A contradictory Canadian public policy of police repression combined with centralized, paternalistic social services explains that country's particularly destructive intravenous cocaine epidemic, particularly among its aboriginal and francophone urbanized populations. The United States suffers from the iatrogenic consequences of its failed war on drugs. Heroin and cocaine have never been purer or cheaper despite the massive investment of U.S. public resources in repression at great humanitarian cost.
ISSN:1606-6359
1476-7392
DOI:10.1080/1606635021000021322