The political economy of heroin and crack cocaine in Tanzania

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Acknowledgements

We thank the communities of people who use drugs in Dar es Salaam and other stakeholders for their strong support and participation in our research efforts. We thank Samuel Kiore, Mary Mbwambo, Brown Ibrahim and members of the new CBO, Methadone Families Against Drug Abuse, for their research assistance. We thank Gernot Klantschnig, Margarita Dimova, Eric Ratliff, Jessie Mbwambo, Lionel Santibinez and two anonymous reviewers of this manuscript who provided suggestions that improved our briefing.

Notes on contributors

Sheryl McCurdy is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health. Over the last 25 years, she has conducted Social Science Research Council and National Institutes of Health funded research as well as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded harm reduction programming in Tanzania. She is currently conducting a Fulbright-funded ethnography of recovery, relapse and reintegration among heroin users in Dar es Salaam. She publishes in African Studies, medicine and public health journals and books.

Pamela Kaduri, MD, Mmed, MscCH, is an Addiction Psychiatrist at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Muhimbili National Hospital, Tanzania, and a Clinician Researcher, Honorary Lecturer with the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. She completed clinical and research fellowships in Addiction Psychiatry and the Social Aetiology of Mental Illness with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. Her addiction and harm reduction work combines research, treatment and policy efforts.

ORCID

Sheryl McCurdy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0526-1608

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to methadone clients, it was in 1989 that friends began charging friends for brown heroin in Dar es Salaam; before then it had been free.

2. In the 2013 study by the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, 7% of the sample reported injecting cocaine (INCB 2015, drawing on report from United Republic of Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare study).

Additional information

Funding

Sheryl McCurdy received partial support for research presented herein from her ongoing Fulbright research [48140050], NIDA grants [R21 DA025478] and [R21 DA019394]. This publication also resulted (in part) from research supported by the Baylor-UTHouston Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), an NIH funded programme [3P30AI036211-20S1].