Cannabis or Alcohol: The Jamaican Experience

Professor Michael Beaubrun of the University of the West Indies was the guest speaker at a joint dinner meeting of the Congress sessions on cannabis and on alcohol. The address provides comparative data from the British West Indies and posits social class and personality factors in the drug of choice — cannabis or alcohol. Beaubrun cites a high correlation between extroversion and heavy drinking; with a preponderance of cyclothymie personalities who are successful in Western cultures, alcohol becomes the "establishment" choice while personality attributes in the "culture of poverty" may lead to cannabis preference. In giving this address, I feel a little like the eunuch's brother — you know the story of the eunuch who was left behind by the sultan in charge of his harem and when the sultan returned and found three of his wives were pregnant, he asked him for the explanation and the eunuch said, "Well, sir, you see while you were away I was down with flu and I asked my brother to take over. You see, sir, he is not cut out for the job!" I too am not cut out for the job. So if you'll accept my remarks in the light of an after dinner speech rather than a serious contribution to the scientific literature, I will proceed. The title of my paper is "Cannabis or Alcohol" and it is not as you might think, the choice being offered by the stewardesses on Air Jamaica instead of tea or coffee. It may be that one day it will be, but my guess is that it won't be for quite some time, because the war about cannabis is still being hotly waged and it looks as though it will be for some time. The decision as to which drug is permitted or used in what culture will continue to be made on irrational grounds, or grounds of economic expediency, rationalized afterwards by double-blind controls — you know the blind leading the the blind. But I think that I don't need to stress to an anthropological audience how irrational has been the behavior of mankind through the ages in the sanctioning of psychotropic substances. Yet, I would suggest to you that these choices have not always been quite so capricious as they might seem. A proper study of any given culture usually reveals the reasons why a particular drug has become the drug of choice of a culture or any subgroup within it. In the search for ways of coping with anxiety and depression and ways of making life more meaningful, mankind through the ages has turned to psychoactive substances. The history of drug use is at least as old as agriculture. It would seem that cultures learn to coexist with drugs by adopting rules and by adopting a set of values and attitudes about them and incorporating this into their way of life. Problems with drugs seem related to the attitudes, customs and rules for their use and non-use. Such attitudes and customs are built into the superego of the growing child by the normal processes of socialization, that is to say, by imitation and conditioning. In those cultures where the rules are inconsistent or conflicting, ambivalence, guilt and anxiety arise and problems tend to be created. Where new drugs are introduced into cultures that have no rules for them, there often exists a period of crisis.