Ganja to Crack: Caribbean Participation in the Underground Economy in Brooklyn, 1976-1986. Part 1. Establishment of the Marijuana Economy

Abstract

The involvement of Caribbean youth in drug distribution (marijuana from the mid- 1960s to 1981; cocaine hydrochloride powder and crack from 1981 to 1987, the time of writing) throughout the Circum-Caribbean area and in North America is described. Social, economic, and cultural outcomes of these engagements are highlighted, and the relationship between the underground economy of drugs and the corporate, capitalist economy is explored. Responding to high rates of unemployment and to other problems of migrant adaptation, young Caribbean African males established a multimillion dollar marijuana (ganja) trading network which linked cultivators on the islands with exporters/importers and street-level distributors in North American cities. By 1976, its participants had become Rastafarians, or followers of an ideology of self-reliance and indigenous development. Following its precepts, they reinvested marijuana revenues to revive cottage industry and agriculture. In Caribbean or minority neighborhoods, therefore, marijuana was a “positive vibration” and its distributors were lionized.

Key Words:

• Marijuana economy
• the informal sector
• reinvestments of marijuana revenues
• revival of cottage industry and indigenous enterprise
• the relation between underground economies and corporate economy