Drug Abuse

ABSTRACT
Data, drawn from field work in progress in Colombia, South America, are presented on the cultivation, marketing, and consumption of cannabis. The analysis is an effort to liberate cannabis from the individualistic, idiosyncratic thinking of past studies. Emphasis is placed on the structure of the community of which cannabis is a part. Subcultural groups related to various stages of the cannabis cycle are discussed with reference tg, their position and function in the larger community, their histories, socioeconomic characteristics, and relationships to each other. Data on cannabis use are presented on the types of social groupings characterized by participation in the cannabis cycle versus those which are not.

The research is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health Predoctoral Research Fellowship number 1F01MH54512-01 CUAN and the supplementary grant number 3F01DA54512-01S1 CUAN.

The anthropological contribution to an understanding of cannabis seems to lie in three distinct but related areas: (1) studies of the nature of the culture and community in which the phenomenon is present; (2) translation of concepts, models, and methods into applicable forms for testing, in the field of social and cultural realities in which the phenomenon is immersed; and (3) ethnohistorical study. The work reported here falls mainly within the first of these three divisions, a community study in the tradition of social anthropology (Arensberg and Kimball 1965).

The objective of the study, begun in July of 1972 and still in progress in a municipio on the north coast of Colombia, South America, is the description and analysis of the subcultural units connected to the cannabis cycle, cultivation, marketing, and consumption. The paper will focus on the subcultural groups associated with cannabis in relation to their position and function in the larger community, following a brief ethnohistorical review.

I. ETHNOHISTORY

The introduction of cannabis into Spanish South America is not well known. Patifio (1967, 1969) indicates that hemp was introduced not once but several times by the Spanish: experiments were attempted in Peru, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, but only Chile developed the capacity to export hemp to Spain (Patifio 1969). In Colombia reports from 1607, 1610, 1632, and 1789 indicate that repeated introductions failed to produce a hemp industry for the rigging of the Spanish fleet (Ibid.). Silvestre (Ver-gara y Velasca 1901) in his 1789 description of the viceroyalty of Santafé de Bogota indicates that hemp was introduced in the savanna of Bogota, but failed so completely that no seed was available for further experimentation. He urged the reintroduction of hemp cultivation near Santa Marta or Cartegena and urged that seed be shipped from Spain (Vergara y Velasca 1901). In Silverstre's opinion hemp could replace cabuya or the fiber of Fourcroya foetida (Milo 1967) in Colombia, indicating the most telling reason for the former's failure in South America. Fique, pita, or cabuya was collected in tribute from the indigenous peoples of Corombia by the first Spanish colonists (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951). As late as the early 1800's cabuya was a Colombian export (Vergara y Velasca 1901). Cabuya replaced hemp in the manufacture of such items as sandals, rope and cordage, sacks, harnesses, and fish nets (Patifio 1967). Another native fiber, cotton, replaced hemp in even such basic items as candle wick, used in huge quantities in the mines of South America, which in Europe had been made of hemp or flax (Ibid.). It appears that native fiber producing plants acted as a barrier to the diffusion of hemp. As late as the present century experiments continue in Colombia (Patifio 1969), but no hemp industry has ever existed in Colombia compared to that which existed in North America (Seale et al. 1952).

The use of cannabis products as intoxicants is still another question. Linguistic evidence indicates West African slaves brought cannabis to Brazil as the earliest route of diffusion (Patifio 1969; AranAjo 1959). The adoption of cannabis smoking by indigenous people of Brazil seems to confirm the antiquity of diffusion in that part of South America (Wagley and Galvdo 1949), but the spread of the custom to Spanish America is less well known. It should be noted that cannabis competed with available indigenous intoxicants, narcotics, and hallucinogens.1 Of these, only tobacco was adopted by Spanish colonists, which with coca had the widest distribution and popularity in the New World. Tobacco was snuffed for headache, chewed for toothache, smoked for "cold humors," and mixed with rum and aguardiente and applied to mosquito bites (Patifio 1967). Negro slaves and Spaniards were reported to use it for working because it reduced fatigue (Ibid.). Due to this property tobacco was allotted as part of the workers' rations on a Jesuit hacienda (Ibid.). Perhaps we have here another barrier to diffusion of cannabis in South America.

It seems certain that smoking cannabis is a relatively new innovation in the region with which we are concerned. Ardila (1965) and Patifio (1969) suggest the Magdalena River valley as the route of penetration into Colombia, from the ports of Santa Marta, Barranquilla, and Cartegena, originating in the Antilles and Panama. Specifically, Ardila (1965) suggests that the spread of the use of cannabis as an intoxicant dates from the work on the Panama Canal and the "intense human interchange" which resulted among Circum-Caribbean countries. This interpretation is given weight by the observation that both Costa Rican and Colombian laws concerning marihuana date from 1927 and 1928 respectively (Patifio 1969; Ardila 1965; Torres 1965), when the movement of braceros and marinercrs was a fact. Nevertheless, it was not until around 1945 that the Colombian press began reporting clandestine marihuana plantations on the Atlantic coast and in the Cauca valley (Patifio 1969).

II. RESEARCH COMMUNITY BACKGROUND

The municipio lies at the base of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, between two of the six rivers which flow to the Ciénaga Grande. Within its boundaries are found vast swamplands and the highest mountain peak in Colombia. The town in which the research was based is the cabacera of the municipio, at a distance of about 90 kilometers from the city of Santa Marta. The areas of dense settlement are the nonflooding lowlands at the base of the mountains and the highland valleys of the rivers. The two areas are ecologically and culturally distinct, each inhabited by a distinct subcultural population, although each is articulated politically, economically, and ritually with the cabacera of the lowlands.

Neither of the ecological-cultural zones was of much interest to the Spanish colonists of the 16th century: Spanish efforts on this part of the coast consisted mainly in exterminating the native population. A high price in blood was paid for a territory left uncolonized until the present century (Alarcon 1963).

The municipio is an excellent example. Governor Garcia de Lerma instituted a scorched earth policy in the region in 1529, burning towns and fields between Santa Marta and the river Magdalena. By 1600 there was no native population in the region. The land was mostly swamp. As late as 1898 a Colombian geographer notes that the region is densely forested, subject to frequent floods, and sparsely populated (Vergara y Velasca 1901).

Beginning in 1896 however, this picture started to change dramatically, when the United Fruit Company began operations in the future zona bananera. By the second decade of the twentieth century, banana plantations blanketed the lowlands from the mountains to the Ciénaga Grande. The municipio was a center of this development. The Company put in production some 10,000 hectdreas, and at the height of productivity a total of 30,000 hectdreas were under cultivation (Kamalaprija 1965; Comisién de Planificación 1964).

Development was spectacular. By 1938 the municipio had sprouted a population of 15,861 persons. United States capitalists, French, English, and American engineers, and a work force recruited from all over the coast founded several such towns, straightened the course of rivers, built a drainage and irrigation system, paved roads, installed bridges, completed a railroad from the docks in Santa Marta to the southern limit of the banana zone, and built work camps and employee housing on vast banana estates. Church records from 1914 to 1925 indicate that about half of the marriages performed united persons from distant regions of the coast. This pattern continues to the present.

The influence of the banana company upon the organization of life in the region was felt in four ways: (1) the local elite composed of original settlers was transformed into a wealthy elite; (2) a middle sector was created by recruitments of employees from the coastal cities; (3) the traditional social relationships among landowners and laborers were altered; and (4) the nature of the social relationships among laborers themselves was changed.

Landowners who were operating tracts of cattle and sugar cane quickly converted to bananas. Some sold their land and moved to the cities, but many built fortunes selling bananas and purchased homes in the coastal cities. They sent their sons and daughters to the capital, to Europe, and to the United States for education. They held political offices at the departmental and national levels where the aristocratic cattle barons of ancient Spanish towns had previously dominated political life.

The middle sector was comprised of employees of the Company: estate managers, clerks, commissary directors, secretaries, fruit selectors, and labor supervisors. They received single family dwellings with running water and indoor plumbing, furniture, mules and horses, coupons for shopping at the Company store, medical treatment in hospitals staffed by United States physicians, and a monthly salary. Their sons and daughters were given scholarships to study at universities. Several of these families also built fortunes during the banana heyday.

Workers were provided with three rooms of a row house, running water and indoor plumbing, reduced train rates, hospital services deducted from their pay (2%), a machete, work clothes and boots, coupons for shopping at the Company store, and a cash wage higher than that paid to workers on the coast today.

Traditional patron-client relations existed among landowners and their laborers. On the coast this relationship entailed the following responsibilities for the landowning employer: lending several hectdreas to his client to plant crops, credit reference at a store in town or an estate commissary, providing a degree of security in times of life crisis or illness as well as small cash gifts. Wage labor destroyed this relationship; workers demanded money in return for labor on the model of the Company relationship with workers, rather than the beneficence of a patron. Landowners charged the Company with "ruining the workers."

Among the workers themselves the industrialization of agriculture naturally included industrial forms of organization. The workers became quite specialized, working in groups at specialized tasks. Significantly, there were no peasants in the municipio during the development of the banana zone as all land was devoted to the plantation production of bananas.3

Other subcultural groups present in the municipio during the early 20th century included Middle East immigrants who opened stores, bars, and brothels, a small number of West Indian immigrants who worked as day laborers, and Americans living in the quinta or group of manor houses on the other side of the railroad tracks.

The picture painted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez of this period in his novel Cien arlos de soledad is for the most part accurate. The small hamlet was indeed transformed into a boom town, with accompanying street brawls and deaths by machete. Many informants repeat the tales of "happy drunks" on Saturday nights burning pesos to light their cigars. The elite founders were the prime movers and beneficiaries of the boom; they drank Scotch, played poker, and grew rich with the Americans.

From 1915 to 1943 the Company exported to the United States all the fruit it could buy or produce. In 1928 the first labor strike in Colombia began in the banana zone resulting in the massacre of thousands of workers by the Colombian army, on the morning of December 6th, 1928, a fact often cited as the reason for the ultimate departure of the United Fruit Company (Montatia 1963; Fluharty 1956). On the contrary, production rose after the strike, reaching a high in 1930 and levelling off at pre-strike levels. Production continued high until 1943 and only then fell drastically. During the World War no ships called for bananas at the port of Santa Marta. When the Company reopened its operations in 1947, it found the land had been invaded by both wealthy private producers and landless laborers (Kamalaprija 1965).

The elaborate road system constructed by the Company provided channels for invading workers, who founded several small hamlets that exist today, and colonized small holdings nearby. In like fashion, but on a grander scale, wealthy landowners annexed lands. The company negotiated a new policy with the Colombian government. Contracts were signed which gave the wealthy squatters the status of arrendatarios or tenants; the peasants were simply ignored. The tenants in turn agreed to sell all bananas produced to the Company and to pay US $ 1.00 for each hecttirea not producing bananas. By the year 1949 exports were higher than the highs of 1930.

But at this time the Company began liquidating its holdings in Colombia as a result of the changed world market. The Company landholdings were reduced until by 1964 it owned no banana-producing land (Ibid.). They were concentrated to the north and the banana industry of the town and municipio died.

With the exit of the Company the municipio saw the exit of wealthy plantation owners, much of the middle sector of employees, and hundreds of workers. Many families of the elite and middle sectors were ruined. The workers lost an income that provided the impetus for migration, an income that was high compared to today's wage.4

Today the lowlands are devoted primarily to rice, cattle, and cattle products. Some 48,964 hectdreas are devoted to pasture while only 23,195 are in agricultural crops (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica 1971 :23). Of the lands in agricultural production perhaps only 3,000 hectdreas are in pan cofer or maize, manioc, and pkitano, the staple foods consumed by the population (Comisién de Planificacién 1964:99). Of total lands being exploited 683 persons own farms of between 1 and 50 hectdreas (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica 1971 :12).5 In short, the latifundia devoted to cattle dominates the landscape, a cultural value with an ancient pedigree in this region of Colombia.

Concomitant with the departure of the Company another process of change was set in motion. In 1948 the civil war called la violencia began in the interior regions of Colombia (see Dix 1967; Fluharty 1956). The effects of this bloodletting, which Hobsbawn (quoted in Dix 1967 : 361) has characterized as "the greatest armed mobilization of peasants in the recent history of the western hemisphere, with the possible exception of some periods during the Mexican revolution," are many and varied. The one that concerns us here took place in the municipio. Families of Andean peasants, mainly from the departments of Santander, Norte de Santander, and Cundinamarca, fleeing the spreading mania migrated to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, an area similar ecologically to the ones they had been forced to abandon. Study of the origins of these families indicates that the move was generally made between the years 1950 and 1953. Most of them directly cite la violencia as their motive for moving. They brought their wives, children, parents, siblings, and other relatives and staked out 50 to 200 hectdreas of land in the low altitude valleys at about 400 to 500 meters. The coastal label for these new colonists is cachacos meaning persons from the interior of Colombia. With them came cachaco storekeepers buying up stores, bars, and brothels.

Between 1947 and 1964, therefore, the entire fabric of community life underwent dramatic change, affecting every element of the community. The transition was not easy or peaceful.6

III. SOCIAL GROUPS AND PARTICIPATION IN CANNABIS CYCLE

The cachacos and costetios form the major division within the community; foreign nationals have departed, except for the turkos or Arabs who have been incorporated through marriage. Each subculture has a distinct social and economic organization, a distinctive heritage, and interacts socially and ritually apart from the other. Within each subculture there are further subdivisions.

The cachacos are composed of the highland peasants living on dispersed individual family farms and the storekeepers who live in town and are gradually acquiring large herds of cattle; the two groups form an interdependent relational system. The peasant subsists mainly upon crops he himself produces (corn and yucca or sweet manioc being the staple'foods), in addition to which cash crops, rice, beans, and corn, are sold to storekeepers in town. The storekeepers grant clients credit and contracts for raising cattle on the highland farms. The peasant can therefore acquire two sources of income: cash crop sales and from the share of cattle he may fatten for a storekeeper patron. But the majority of Andean peasants have only the former option, as there are a limited number of cachaco patrons and cattle.

An additional source of income is provided by the cultivation of cannabis. The sparse settlement of the Sierra Nevada and the rugged terrain permit some protection and the legend of cachaco violence• prevents too many inquisitive intruders. Cannabis is grown as a cash crop; it is not consumed by the cachacos who cultivate it, nor by those neighbors who do not. The sale of the crop is arranged through coastal middlemen who live in the towns and cities. Cachaco storekeepers do not deal in cannabis. Contracts are often made before the crop is planted and buyers sometimes treat their clients in traditional paternalistic fashion, giving gifts of rum, aguardiente and money. But such contracts seldom bind either party for more than one growing season. Cash cropping of cannabis appears to be the best of all possible incomes for a peasant: a kilo of coffee, the best of cash crops in Colombia, brings 12.50 pesos whereas a pound of cannabis will net from 100 to 300 pesos, depending on the quality. But it is a business that takes pateloncitos or guts as one farmer said. Yet at the time of this writing no peasant in this region has been bothered by police investigation or arrest. Most highland peasants are aware, however, that pressure from the United States has produced arrests for cultivation of cannabis in other regions of Colombia.

The cachaco vereda or rural neighborhood is an ethnocentric homogenous, politically cohesive unit (Fais Borda's 1955 definition applies equally well to these immigrants as it did to peasants in Boyacá). The various highland veredas are linked together by filial and affinai kinship ties of ritual obligations and ties of common origin. The work unit which exploits the land is composed of male members of the extended household, a man, his oldest sons, sons-in-law, and any other male relatives present. The household head directs all farming activity and even adult sons will consult with him before setting out to the field to work. Few residents of the vereda have family in the town or in the rural areas of the lowlands, but all have family in their municipios of origin. When a death occurs 'relatives and neighbors of the vereda come for the nine-day wake and the first anniversary wake. In several cases, families living in the highlands have migrated from the same municipio in the interior and settled near each other. But the males of different families do not work cooperatively, except in hunting rieke and other wild meat. Wage labor is absent from the highland vereda, excepting the police commissioner who is recruited from among the peasants. The current officeholder cultivates cannabis for cash sales. Aside from his familial and friendship ties, this may be another reason he has never arrested anyone for cultivating cannabis.

The cachaco storekeepers are an important economic force in the vereda and the town, and are clearly part of the cachaco subculture. They willingly sell rum and aguardiente for coastal fiestas such as Carnaval but do not themselves participate. Although they are part of the highland vereda, they play no role in the cannabis cycle.

The coastal subculture is more complex in structure and is perhaps best described as a series of subsystems. The first of these is the estate system, including landowners, estate managers, estate employees, and wage laborers. The employees on the estate sometimes live in outbuildings left by the Company, but frequently they live in the better town barrios.

They receive only slightly higher wages than the day laborer, but they have the security of steady employment, often the use of 2 or 3 hectdreas for planting, and the higher status of machinery operators. It is the estate employee who drives the tractors, combines, trucks, and other farm equipment. When landowners have estates in several different parts of the municipio, or in other municipios or other departments, the employees usually work on all of his holdings and thus travel widely. The day laborers, on the other hand, are recruited from the landless poor of the town and country. None live on the estates where they find work. The day laborer obtains work on a contract basis and is often called a contractista. He is hired by the job, for a certain task over a certain period of time, and then released: to clean an irrigation canal, to cut and clear brush from a field, to dig ditches that carry water to the crop, to fumigate a field to keep weeds down, to herd cattle, etc. Thus, the work group in the coastal subculture is composed of male nonkin. It is from this group of day laborers that the cannabis consumers come. Cannabis in the form of cigarettes is consumed among groups of day laborers while working; it is generally purchased as they have no land on which to grow their own.

The landed gentry live in the coastal cities, in contrast to the days of the banana zone when they constituted a town landed gentry. An estate manager has the responsibility of running the estate, including hiring and firing workers, directing day to day operations, operating a commissary for employees, and traveling to the city to consult the owner and receive money for paying workers and expenses. The managers form a minor elite in the rural lowlands and are generally recruited from an educated minority in this and other coastal towns. In many cases they are the offspring of former employees of the United Fruit Company.

Identification of commercial buyers of cannabis is a tricky and dangerous process. Contacts are difficult to maintain when one is not buying. But those who are known are drawn entirely from the upper sector of the community. Given the crisis which enveloped many of these families upon the departure of the Company, it is logical that they would be drawn into lucrative trade activity in an effort to retain their newly won status and income. Not only in the case of cannabis but in the bustling contraband trade with Venezuelan black marketeers, members of the upper sector play principal roles. It is they who staff the patronage government customs posts and the smuggling operation. Cannabis traffic has been accepted as merely another contraband activity, one of the more lucrative specializations. Members of the best families are involved in contraband activity and in the towns and cities the upper sector families are avid consumers as well. Thus, professionals, landowners, and businessmen of the coastal subculture form the commercial buyers of cannabis.

The third subsystem of the coastal subculture is that composed of coastal peasants and coastal shopkeepers. The Arab-owned shops on the market square are the focus of this subsystem, just as the highland shopkeepers of the town are the focus of the cachaco subculture. Credit is granted the coastal peasant and he markets some of his produce to pay his bill where he has credit. Similarly, coastal peasants sell fruit and vegetables to street vendors. The coastal peasant generally has less land than his Andean counterpart, sometimes only 2 or 3 hect6reas. The coastal peasant also raises fewer cash crops than his cachaco counterpart, and depends upon &tan° as his staple food more than on corn or manioc. He frequently lives in a poor barrio in town, commuting by burro or by foot to his farm where he may stay for several days. Typically, the coastal peasant has had years of experience as a wage laborer on other people's land. Through saving, establishing a good reputation as a padre de familia, and obtaining credit through a fiador or cosigner he has been able to purchase his own land. He himself and his neighbors consider him a successful man.

Unlike the highlanders, the coastal peasants are consumers of cannabis, which they frequently grow for their own use and for petty trade with landless day laborers. Cannabis grown in small quantities in the lowlands is used by the long-term cannabis user. Highlands commercial growers produce for the urban internal and international markets in large quantities on a hectarea or more whereas the coastal peasant often grows no more than a few plants.

In summary, the cannabis production-distribution-consumption cycle involves groups drawn from both the major subcultures of the community. Andean peasants in the lower altitude valleys of the Sierra Nevada are the commercial cultivators. Consumers are drawn from the wage laborers and coastal peasants; the latter also being small-scale cultivators and the former frequently petty merchandisers. Large scale merchandisers are members of the upper sector of the coastal subculture and among the most respected of townspeople. The place of these groups in the organization of community life is best demonstrated by Figure 1. It is important to note that these groups are not drawn from deviant, parasitic, or marginal elements of the community.

IV. CANNABIS CYCLE

Cultivation:

Today cannabis is farmed in secret; the peasant generally plants his seeds just as the March rains begin, usually on an isolated part of his farm hidden by dense underbrush. Commercial growers in the highlands first germinate their seeds in a germination box made of four logs placed in a square surrounding well cleaned and mixed soil. Seeds are simply scattered on the surface of the prepared soil. A thick layer of commercial ant-killer is spread around the perimeter. The plants are thinned, selected, and transplanted in about 15 or 20 days to the peasants' rosa. The rosa is a mixed garden plot, always located on the steep hillsides, and moved every few years in the pattern of swidden land use. When cannabis is included in the rosa it is planted at the lowest point on the hillside, below the tall corn plants, far from the numerous paths which criss-cross the ridge tops, to conceal the growing crop.

Coastal peasants do not utilize the germination box; they simply plant cannabis seeds in the same way they plant corn. A hole is poked in the prepared soil with a machete and covered with the foot after several seeds are inserted. Several weeks later the smaller of the plants are thinned out, leaving the healthiest looking plants to grow to maturity. When asked about this difference in planting techniques coastal informants explain that the cachacos use a germination box because they are all from Norte de Santander. In that region tobacco is an important cash crop, and since tobacco seeds are quite small a germination box is needed. But there is no need for this with cannabis. The coastal peasants conclude that cachacos plant as they do out of habit.

Peasants classify the parts of the plant in two categories: la mona, a mixture of resin and small leaves from the tops of the mature female plants, and la hoja, the larger lower leaves of both male and female plants. La mona is sold for around 200 to 300 pesos a pound and la hoja brings about 100 pesos a pound. The merchandiser usually doubles the prices paid to the peasant when the product is retailed. The growing season runs from March until August or September, or five to six months to obtain la mona. Consumers universally prefer la mona for smoking.

It should be noted, however, that la mona is a generic term for cannabis as well as the terms la amarilla and marihuana.? Consumers usually refer to cannabis simply as la mona or ella, regardless of the category being consumed. One never hears the Spanish cciiiamo or hemp applied to cannabis in the municipio; cciiiamo signifies a lasso of cabuya fiber in this region' of Colombia.

Harvesting the cannabis crop takes several days of intense labor. The plants are first girdled by cutting off a ring of bark around the circumference of the trunk. In a few days the leaves begin to fall off. These are either gathered and packed for sale as they fall or are picked just before falling. When all the leaves have fallen the tip of the female plant, called la mota, is harvested. In this fashion the leaves are air and sun dried before sale or consumption. This process of harvesting is believed to increase the potency of the marihuana: by girdling the trunk, informants state, one conserves the leche or sap of the plant and this is believed to rise to the tip of the plant since it cannot flow to the roots.

At least two varieties of cannabis are recognized by highland commercial growers and lowland consumers and petty merchants. Samples of these varieties have been collected for botanical and chemical analysis.8

Some commercial growers report a variety of cannabis they call patagallina or chicken foot. This is said to be an inferior grade, but in reality appears to be Hibiscus cannabinus L. or kenaf (Pate et al. 1954). During the 1950's a landowner in the municipio operated a fiber industry under contract with the United States Department of Agriculture. This operation was closed down in 1961, but plants can still be found in the area. Patagallina seems to resemble cannabis in leaf form and stature only, which does not preclude its sale as cannabis. This mistaken identification of kenaf as cannabis and the inappropriate cultivation techniques imported from the interior of the country both point to the cachaco cultivators as relatively new innovators. While the presence of cannabis among coastal people seems traditional, it is probably a market-induced phenomenon among the highlanders.

Distribution:

There are two separate distribution systems which correspond to the two systems of cultivation. The first is the market induced system, involving highland commercial growers and wealthy coastal buyers and retailers. This system moves large quantities of marihuana to the cities of the coast, often for export to the United States.8 The second or local system involves no wealthy upper sector middlemen but is specific to lower section day laborers and coastal peasants. The coastal peasantyroduces cannabis in small quantities and day laborers who are consumers also purchase some for resale to fellow day laborers in the town and countryside. A single plant may produce two pounds of la mona and up to twenty pounds of la hoja, so that a peasant who grows around 10 plants will frequently be able to sell several pounds and still conserve enough for his own needs.

The homes of day laborers who act as distributors are often centers where users assemble to smoke marihuana, talk and gossip, and make small purchases. Such sites are called caletas which means small bays or coves in nautical terminology. Since these sites are frequented by a number of people, informants were asked how secrecy and some degree of security from law enforcement officials was maintained. They explained that the police are frequently consumers of cannabis, and that those who are not accept bribes quite readily. Secondly, the petty merchant usually gets on well with his neighbors because he gives them small loans of perhaps 5 or 10 pesos, which are seldom repaid. Such a good neighbor policy is considered a business cost to be absorbed.

Consumption:

Figure 2 shows the varieties of cannabis use in the municipio and the groups in which each form occurs. These will be discussed separately.

There is widespread belief in the efficacy of cannabis mixed with rum or aguardiente and applied to the skin for pain of joints and muscles. The practice is present throughout the coastal subculture. A puzzling fact is that this mixture and its use for relief of pain is absent from the treatments reported by coastal curanderos or herbalists. The practice of mixing various plant parts with rum or aguardiente is common for the treatment of pain, snake bite, and to stop bleeding; but in all cases the mixture is to be drunk, not applied to the skin. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact that herbalists are specialists, for example, in snake bite treatment or protection from evil curses. In contrast, the knowledge that cannabis can be used for treatment of pain is widespread and not the unique property of the curanderos. Curanderos normally keep their formulas secret. And it will be remembered that the use of tobacco in this form is quite old on the coast, and the medicinal use of cannabis might derive from this practice (Patifio 1967).

The use of cannabis for health maintenance is also reported (Fabrega and Manning 1972). Cases cited involve men of advanced age who smoked all their lives and have enjoyed excellent health; they state that smoking marihuana is generally good for one's health. The green leaves are crushed and rubbed on the skin for treatment of minor pain and cannabis is mixed with water and raw sugar and brewed as a tea given to infants to stop excessive crying.

Smoking cannabis is restricted to the lower sector of the coastal subculture, composed of landless day laborers and peasants as reported for the Caribbean (Rubin, Comitas, this volume). In all cases cannabis is smoked in cigarette form. It is first air and sun dried; green cannabis is said to "inflame the head." It is smoked pure, unmixed with other substances. The cigarette is rolled in commercial tobacco cigarette paper, other kinds of paper burning too hot, and it is generally short and thin. Probably no more than a gram is contained in these cigarettes.

The coastal group is composed of unrelated males, the exact composition of which may change from week to week; it is in this group that marihuana is consumed. A group contracted to clean an irrigation ditch, for example, will assemble in the morning on the estate after catching rides or walking from town. They assemble to sharpen their machetes, talk about girls, dances and drunks, and to smoke a marihuana cigarette.10 The cigarette is shared among the men just as tobacco cigarettes are often shared. They receive work directions from the estate manager and set about their task. Around 10:00 o'clock in the morning they may pause again for another marihuana cigarette, they continue working until noon. They bring with them in their mochilas, or woven carrying bags of cabuya, several nesting aluminium pots with a hot stew prepared in the morning by wives, sisters, or daughters. After lunch they stretch out under the branches of a tree for siesta. Work resumes around 2:00 p.m. and another marihuana cigarette is smoked. Around 4:00 or 5 :00 p.m. they will start for home. In the evening they may meet neighbors and friends at a bar for beer, rum, or aguardiente. But the friends with whom they drink may or may not be the same with whom they spent the daylight hours working.

Marihuana cigarettes are not always consumed by the workers, depending upon the availability which in turn depends upon limited resources. But some informants report that they are unable to work without smoking marihuana; they have no fuerza or force and they lack the necessary dnimo or spirit for working. Not all workers smoke, nor are they encouraged to do so. I have never heard disapproval of the practice expressed in work groups: "he is an addict" nonsmokers will say, but they do not avoid smokers in town or treat them in any special fashion. At work it is impossible to tell one who is a smoker from one who is not, unless consumption is observed»

On the basis of interviews and observations, from 5 to 7 marihuana cigarettes are consumed in a day, only one is smoked at a time. These are not passed from person to person, but each individual smokes the same way he normally smokes a tobacco cigarette, no effort apparently being made to retain the smoke in the lungs (Partridge 1973). Coastal peasants consume cannabis in the same manner and in the work context, but they smoke alone on their farms since they are no longer working in a nonkin male group. One old man is locally known as the Rey de la marihuana. He is an adobe brick maker who uses cannabis during his work; he is said to be the best brick maker in town by consumers and nonconsumers alike, turning out more brick faster than any other brick maker. Smokers credit this to the effects of cannabis to quita el cansancio or reduce fatigue, to increase fuerza or force, to make a man incansable or tireless, and to give dnimo or spirit for working. Such words and phrases are the most frequent responses to questions regarding the effects perceived by the user. A few informants report that they smoke marihuana to relax, to think about and resolve some problem that is troubling them, or to go to sleep at night, but these are not mentioned as frequently as those connected with work. Laborers on construction sites in coastal cities are also reported to smoke marihuana in the morning before going to work and during their agua de panela (water mixed with raw sugar) breaks during the day.

While most informants also report using marihuana for leisure activities such as fiestas, I have not observed this with any frequency. Several informants who live and work in the municipio confirm the report that in Cartagena where they were born, there are social clubs for smoking marihuana and leisure activity (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 1972). And in fact all the female smokers interviewed were born and grew up in the city of Cartagena or in the department of Bolivar. In the department of Magdalena, in which the municipio is located, the incidence of female smokers is quite low, and there are no social clubs where cannabis is smoked during leisure activities.

In reality, alcohol is the drug of choice on festive days in this region of Colombia, being an essential element in the reciprocal relationships among male laborers (Gutierrez de Pineda 1958). Informants mention that cannabis is cheaper than alcohol and is preferred for this reason. They also report that cannabis is better than alcohol for sexual relations because the former does not inhibit sexual desire or capability in contrast to alcohol, but the same informants can often be found drinking at the stores and bars in town.

Female smokers are rare in Magdalena; however, one female informant reports that women habitually smoke greater amounts of cannabis than do men. She informed me she smoked up to twenty marihuana cigarettes, each day, every day. Little information is available at present concerning the socialization of females into cannabis use patterns.

Males are socialized into use during late adolescence, with the initiation of adult work patterns. Informants report learning to smoke in the male work group; only one learned in the context of a fiesta activity. Such learning seems to depend largely upon individual interaction patterns and friendships, since most informants are the only adult males in their families who smoke cannabis. No informant reported that his father used the drug. This is not surprising given the nonkin composition of the male work group where socialization takes place.

Informants began smoking cannabis between the ages of 12 and 22, and have between 11 and 31 years of experience; all are male heads of households which they support entirely. Those informants who are coastal peasants are all former day laborers, as is typical of the group. Through saving and obtaining a cosigner they have been able to establish credit and buy a piece of land or they are colonos who for years have sucessfully supported a family from the land they took over and planted. For these peasants, socialization into cannabis use patterns began in the nonkin male work group. Cannabis consumers are thus best described as nonkin networks of landless day laborers, some of whom eventually obtain land.

Informants report that a person who is debil en la cabeza or weak in the head should not use cannabis. They observe that the drug often "turns people crazy," but these are said to be people with "weak heads." Only one informant reported experiencing negative effects which he described as a feeling of sleepiness; he recommended cold water poured over the head, eating green bananas, and drinking hot black coffee as remedies.

No informant reported visual distortion, seeing strange things, or having hallucinations while smoking cannabis. This is remarkable given the belief, common in the United States, that cannabis grown in this region of Colombia is one of the most potent varieties. One informant reported that the novice often feels hunger, as if he could eat a "whole cow." But this passes when one learns the effects of the plant.

Consumption patterns of other drugs should also be considered, given the high correlation reported in the United States between the use of alcohol and tobacco and cannabis (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 1971; U.S. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse 1972). Alcohol is easily the most popular of all drugs used by all subcultural groups in the municipio. There are four patterns of use: (1) reciprocal buying and mutual consumption among friends and business associates at cockfights, during the sale of animals, at leisure at stores and bars, etc.; (2) individual consumption by peasants and coastal day laborers in the morning before going to work, and to a lesser degree during working hours; (3) two-to three-day borracheras or drunk feasts during fiesta days, family celebrations, or on a whim; and (4) ritual drinking at the point of stupefication at weddings, during the nine-day wake, and at other life crisis events.

The first pattern is part of a wider system of social and economic reciprocal relationships. The sale of a cow by a storekeeper to a peasant demands that the former buys drinks for the latter. A landowner attending a cockfight who meets an employee of his, will purchase drinks for both as part,of the patron-client relationship. A peasant who had been given good manioc or corn seed will partly repay his peer with a bottle which they can share at a store.
The second pattern is largely confined to agricultural workers and peasants. Alcohol is consumed with the morning black coffee. Infrequently laborers will consume a bottle during the day while working, this is shared among their fellows who are expected to reciprocate later. And a few laborers are so fond of aguardiente that a ration of it is part of their contract with an employer.

The third pattern of use is confined to the upper sector of the coastal subculture, since the poor have few resources for binges. The wealthy are famous for drunken feasts; stories are told and retold of conspicuous alcohol consumption, pranks such as chicken' stealing and putting soap in food for a wedding party, and extended stints in local brothels.

The fourth pattern is present throughout the highland subculture. Life-crisis events are generally drunken affairs; the wake and the first year anniversary observation of the death of a relative are the most outstanding, calling for the consumption of quantities of food, chicha or maize beer, and aguardiente.

Tobacco is also consumed by all groups but it is seldom used habitually as in the United States. Rather, cigarettes are frequently purchased one or two at a time. One may go for days smoking only once or twice and then at a fiesta or during an evening of drinking, consume an entire pack with friends. At upper sector feasts tobacco cigarettes are provided together with food and drink for the guests, and on such occasions persons who normally do not smoke tobacco may indulge. Females of all groups in the municipio use alcohol and tobacco only rarely; upper sector females take both during fiestas and private parties at home. Females of advanced age in all groups of the coastal subculture smoke tobacco cigars, with the burning end inside their mouths as is the coastal custom.

V. LEGAL PROHIBITION AND SOCIAL VALUES

There are legal and social sanctions against the cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis in Colombia. Decree 1699 of 1964, Article 23, dictates from 2 to 5 years of incarceration for cultivation, elaboration, distribution, sale, use, or possession of cannabis. Article 24 prescribes 1 to 4 years of incarceration for the same offenses regarding any kind of estupificante (Torres Ortega 1965). In the municipio it is recognized that cannabis is totally prohibited by law. Moreover, social tradition conceives of a marihuanero as a lazy, often criminal, vagabond. To be called such is to be called a bum. Neither of these sanctions seems to deter cultivation or use.

Most townspeople, public officials, and growers simply wink an eye at cultivation and say that it brings United States dollars into Colombia. Cannabis cultivation and marketing are placed in the same class as contraband, in which most upper sector persons play some role. As one upper sector woman laughingly told the observer, "[name of municipio] produces the best marihuana in the world." Contrary to what might be expected, the commercial growers are drawn from among the most well off and prosperous of the cachaco peasants. Some cultivators are youthful adults, but most are well advanced in age, well established, and highly respected household heads.

Consumption of cannabis is another matter. Smoking is a lower sector activity. All instances in which I have heard persons called marihuaneros have involved upper sector families reprimanding their offspring or gossiping about other families. One never hears the word in lower sector families. This label appears to be a stigma applied to poorer persons in general by upper sector families, since the people they gossip about and label marihuaneros are often not cannabis consumers. And the true identities of long-term users are well known in the municipio, by everyone from the mayor to the police.

Such negative stigmas, however, tell us little about what people actually value. For this reason the anthropologist examines values as they are reflected in social interaction, rather than ideology, spoken and written words, and formal law (Kluckholn 1954). We have seen that many lower-sector males value cannabis as a supplement to work, leisure, sex, for the treatment of pain, and in health maintenance.

Analysis of the interaction patterns typical of each subculture brings into sharp focus the significant differences between them. The subculture in which the consumer lives is characterized by a mobile subsistence pattern, nonkin male work groups, stem family structure, and wage labor. The subculture which does not contribute consumers (although there is ample opportunity since they produce tons of cannabis) is characterized by a sedentary subsistence pattern, the kinbased male work group, the three-generation extended family structure, and swidden agriculture.

These are only the central differences, many others exist. Perhaps the most telling difference is that of mobile versus immobile settlement patterns. The coastal subculture concentrated in the towns and cities is an urban oriented population. Even when living in the rural area geographical mobility is normal and urban work experience is common. The nonkin male work group, adolescent peer groups, and the stem family are all structures which conform well to the migratory subsistence pattern. In contrast, the highland subculture scattered about on dispersed individual family farms offers little opportunity for mobility, cooperation among nonkin, the formation of adolescent peer groups, or the budding off of nuclear units. Mobility data from the municipio confirm this pattern. In a rural hamlet surveyed only 2 of 25 male household heads and only 5 of 25 female mates were born in the municipio. Only 4 household heads had worked solely in the municipio, whereas 21 had worked in other municipios and other departments. Of the latter, 10 had worked in cities of the coast. In a town barrio surveyed, 23 of 76 household heads were born in the municipio, and 36 of 76 mates were born in the municipio. Of 76 household heads, 26 had worked in other departments of the coast and 33 had worked in the cities.

The process of migration begins in the late adolescence or at about the age of 18 when a young man frequently leaves home and obtains wage labor where his travels lead him. Typically, the worker settles down with a mate some years later. He is brought in and out of contact with his family members, reciprocal relations with nonkin evolving as he travels. Almost always he will come home for fiestas and holidays, traveling 100 or more kilometers.

Socialization to cannabis use takes place during this migratory phase in the life of a coastal worker. All informants have histories of wage labor in other departments and cities. Several have had a few years of experience working in the banana zone; some have been able to save money, maintain a good reputation, and obtain credit and are now landowners living a sedentary existence. Others merely acquired mates and children and settled in one of the towns discovered during their youth. They all learned to smoke cannabis as young wage laborers.

Since not all coastal peasants and day laborers consume cannabis we must ask what are the differences observed among users and nonusers. Briefly, none have been observed. Studies of other Colombian user populations have pointed to factors such as mobility, single marital status, marginality, unemployment, concubinage, criminality, lack of housing, lack of children, low salary, low productivity, illiteracy, family disintegration, and segregation from the larger society as characteristic of cannabis users (Ardila 1965). Interestingly enough, nonusers and users of the day laborers and coastal peasants are more alike with regard to these factors than different. About half of all day laborers live in concubinage, more than a third are illiterate, and the rest have only 1 to 3 years of primary schooling; all earn low wages and have no resources of productivity aside from their backs. All workers in the coastal subculture are mobile early in life, unemployment is generally confined to the aged and is absent among cannabis informants; criminality is rare and no cannabis informant has ever been in jail; and cannabis consumers are no more segregated from society than are nonusers. Lack of housing is atypical of users and nonusers and some users have more than one house. Single marital status is not typical of any group in the municipio and a lack of children is unheard of. "Marginality" and "family disintegration" are concepts that cannot be compared among populations without definition. If marginality means an absence of the social and economic reciprocal relationships typical of the community, then cannabis consumers are not marginal. If family disintegration means some form of family life other than that typical of the community, cannabis consumers do not live in disintegrated families. In short, cannabis consumers and non-consumers have more in common than in contrast by the light of these characteristics. The fact is that Ardila (1965) depends mostly upon Colombian police records, since there has been no scientific work on cannabis in Colombia.

Some investigators in the United States have posited a relationship between social and psychological stress and cannabis (Ausubel 1970; Partridge 1973). Since the community discussed in this paper has experienced significant social and economic changes that are generally stressful, we should consider this interpretation. Abandonment of the banana zone produced a grave economic crisis throughout the coastal subculture; upper sector families were probably the hardest hit, since they had developed considerable wealth and status due to the presence of the United Fruit Company. It is likely that this crisis is a factor in explaining their present involvement in the internal and international drug traffic. The workers, on the other hand, experienced no dramatic social mobility. It is true that the worker is worse off than at any time during this century, but he did not experience the relative deprivation of upward mobility followed by economic crisis. Moreover, about 11 of 25 families in a rural hamlet had some member working for the Company, while in the town barrio only 16 of 76 families had a similar experience, and most day laborers and peasants had worked with the Company for only 1 to 5 years, unlike the grandparental generation in which 30 and more years experience is not uncommon Cannabis users frequently have had work experience with the Company, but never unbroken by other employment and never for more than a few years. We might relate cannabis consumption to stress if the exit of the Company affected the present generation of coaStal workers in general and cannabis consumers in particular, but work histories are varied and rarely dominated by experience with the Company.

In conclusion, the following generalizations are supported by the data :12

1. Cannabis cultivation, marketing, and consumption seem to be relatively recent innovations on the north coast of Colombia.

2. Cannabis cultivators, merchants, and consumers, are integral members of the community in which they live, involved in typical community systems of social and economic reciprocities.

3. Long term cannabis consumption (more than ten years) is not observed to engender indolence, parasitism, or marginality, in that the oldest and most experienced consumers have often bettered their social and economic position during their lives.

4. Cannabis consumption is related to mobile patterns of subsistence early in the life of the coastal day laborer, in which there is contact with users and socialization to cannabis use.

5. Cannabis consumption occurs in the context of the nonkin work group, although users continue to consume the drug alone when patterns of subsistence change.

6. Cannabis consumption does not appear to be related to stressful conditions produced by severe social and economic change in the history of the community.

7. Cannabis merchandising does appear to be related to stressful conditions produced by severe social and economic change in the history of the community.

8. Cannabis merchandising is governed by two distinct systems of distribution, a market induced system involving Andean peasant growers and wealthy upper sector coastal buyers, and a local system involving small vendors among the day laborers and peasant growers of the coastal subculture.

9. Alcohol is the traditional and actual drug of choice for business negotiation, social relations, and religious celebration. Since a bottle of alcohol costs a full day's wage for a day laborer, cannabis may be related to economic deprivation resulting from exploitative wage levels.

10. The use of tobacco for treatment of pain and reduction of fatigue are traditional, and cannabis has been adopted to serve these same functions; this suggests that cannabis use may be related to tobacco use in the coastal subculture, and may have been substituted for tobacco at s'orne time in the past.

REFERENCES

ALARCON, JOSÉ C.
1963 Compendio de histofra del departamento de la Magdalena de 1525 hasta 1895. Bogota: Editorial El Voto Nacional.

ARAM:Q.0, ALCEN MAYNARD
1959 Medicina rustica, Brasiliana, V. 300. Sic> Paulo: Compafiia Editora Nacional.

ARENSBERG, CONRAD M., SOLON T. KIMBALL
1965 Culture and community. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

ARDILA RODRIGUEZ, FRANCISCO
1965 Aspectos médico legales y médico sociales de la marihuana. Thesis Doctoral, Universidad de Madrid, Facultad de Medicina.

AUSUBEL, DAVID P.
1970 "The psychology of the marihuana smoker," in Erich Goode (ed.), Marijuana. New York: Atherton Press.

COMISON DE PLANIFICACON
1964 Plan de desarrollo econômico y social del departamento de la Magdalena. Santa Marta.

DEPARTAMENTO ADMINISTRATIVO NACIONAL DE ESTADiSTICA
1971 Censo agropecuario, 1970-1971, Tomo II. Bogota: Centro Administrativo Nacional via a Eldorado.

DIX, ROBERT
1967 Colombia: the political dimensions of change. New Haven: Yale University Press.

FABREGA, HORACIO JR., PETER K. MANNING
1972 "Health maintenance among Peruvian peasants." Human Organization 31 (3):243-256.

FALS BORDA, ORLANDO
1955 Peasant society in the Colombian Andes. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
1956 "Fragmentation of holdings in Boyaca, Colombia." Rural Sociology 21 (2):158-163.

FLUHARTY, VERNON LEE
1956 Dance of the millions: military rule and the social revolution in Colombia,
1930-1956. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

GARCIA MARQUEZ, GABRIEL
1970 One hundred years of solitude. New York: Harper and Row. (Original title Cien ethos de soledad.)

GUTIERREZ DE PINEDA, VIRGINIA
1958 "Alcohol y cultura en una clase obrera," in Paul Rivet (ed.), Homenaje. Bogota: Editorial ABC.

KAMAL'APRIJA, V.
1965 Estudio descriptivo de la estructura del mercado del banano Colombian° para la exportack3n. Bogota: Instituto Latinoamericano de Marcadeo Agrigola.

KLUCKHOLN, CLYDE
1954 "Values and value orientation in the theory of action," in Talcott Parsons and Edwards Shils (eds.), Toward a general theory of action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

MONTARA CUELLAR, DIEGO
1963 Colombia: pals formal y pals real. Buenos Aires: Editorial Platina.

PATE, JAME B., CHARLES C. SEALE, EDWARD O. GANGSTAD
1954 Varietal studies of kenaf, Hibiscus cannabinus L., in South Florida. Agronomy Journal 46 (2): 75-77.

PATIO, VICTOR MANUEL
1967 Plantas cultivadas y animales domésticos en América Equinoccial: plantas miscelaneas, Tomo III. Cali: Imprenta Departamental.
1969 Plantas cultivadas y animales domesticos en America Equinoccial: plantas introducidas, Tomo IV. Cali: Imprenta Departamental.

PARTRIDGE, WILLIAM L.
1973 The hippie ghetto: the natural history of a subculture. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston Inc.

REICHEL-DOLMATOFF, GERARDO
1951 Datos historico-culturales sobre las tribus de la antigua gobernacidn de Santa Marta. Bogota: Banco de la Republica.

SEALE, C. C., J. F. JOYNER, J. B. PATE
1952 Agronomic studies of fiber plants: jute, sisal, henequen, fureraea, hemp, and other miscellaneous types. Gainesville: University of Florida Agricultural Experiment Stations Bulletin 590.

TORRES ORTEGA, JORGE
1965 Crkligo penal y cédigo de procedimiento penal. Bogota: Editorial Ternes.

U.S. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON MARIHUANA AND DRUG ABUSE
1972 Marihuana: a signal of misunderstanding. New York: Signet.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE. NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH.
1971 Marihuana and Health: a Report to the Congress from the Secretary. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.
1972 Marihuana and Health: Second Annual Report to Congress from the Secretary. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

VERGARA Y VELASCA, F. J.
1901 Nueva geografia de Colombia, Tomo I. Bogota: Republica de Colombia.

WAGLEY, CHARLES, EDUARDO GALV7i0
1949 The Tenetehara Indians of Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press.

1 Erythroxylon coca, Banisteriopsis spp., Phyllanthus mexiae, Opuntia spp., Datura arborea, Methysticodendron amesianum, Nicotiana tabacum, and Clibadium surinamense.

2 This pattern changed during World War II with the invasion of the lands of the United Fruit Company by landless workers who then became peasants exploiting a few hecttireas. These peasants are now being offered title to the land by INCORA, but many refuse as they wish to avoid taxes. Still others desire title so as to qualify for loans with the Caja Agraria for cash crops, animals, or more land.

3 Original maps used by the United Fruit Company were kindly made available by the offices of INCORA in Sevilla, Magdelena.

4 At the exchange rate of 1.02 pesos to the dollar in 1925, the worker earning 1.30 pesos a day received about US $1.30 a day. Today the worker makes 25 pesos a day (some as little as 15 or 20), and at the exchange rate of 23.00 he earns the equivalent of US $1.05 a day. (Wage levels collected from former workers for the United Fruit Company. Exchange rates taken from Kamalaprija 1965.) It should also be noted that food and goods available in Company stores were much cheaper than that available for persons not working for the Company.

5 These figures are based on the Department of Statistics' concept of a "unit of exploitation" which is all the land within a municipio exploited by a single producer, individual, or corporation. It should be noted, however, that the land use pattern in this region of Colombia is different from that observed in other regions (e.g. Fais Borda 1956; Fluharty 1956) where holdings are widely scattered. Land holdings in this region tend to be concentrated in a single farm. Exceptions are generally latifundistas who have holdings scattered over the municipio and often in several municipios and departments.

6 The legend of cachaco violence persists to the present. Some Antioquia cachacos migrated into the municipio at the start of this century to work for the Company and were responsible for the deaths of several coastal men in razor fights, according to informants. One night in 1914 the coastal townspeople dispatched the entire immigrant group with machetes. No other cachacos came to the municipio until the 1950's. While no incidents occurred at this time, the cachacos are perceived as violent and dangerous as evidenced by la violencia in the interior departments from 1948 to 1968.

7 The word cannabis is frequently heard among the offspring of upper sector families who experiment with cannabis and other drugs. A discussion of this group is omitted here, since the phenomenon is related to the influence of American and European hippie groups and clearly not related to customary patterns of long-term use in the lower sector of the municipio. For similar reasons, a discussion of cannabis smoking by lawyers, dentists, agronomists, and other professional people in the urban centers is also omitted.

8 Professor Richard Evans Schultes, Harvard University, has agreed to examine samples collected by the author from the plantations in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Chemical studies of these plants will also be undertaken in the near future.

9 Quantities of marihuana are confiscated by the police in the major cities of the coast as reported by El Tiempo, May 8, 1973, El Espectador, April 12, 1973, El Espectador, January 5, 1973, El Espectador, November 19, 1972, El Tiempo, June 13, 1973, El Diario del Caribe, May 26, 1973.

10 The marihuana cigarette is called a cigarrillo just as are tobacco cigarettes. There is little evidence of a special argot among cannabis consumers.

11 Dr. Joseph Schaeffer has pointed out that detailed study of video tapes made of smokers and nonsmokers in Jamaica reveal that there are subtle behavioral modifications among the smokers. But this can not be detected by the observer (Schaeffer, this volume).

12 These conclusions must be considered preliminary, as full analysis will not be possible until all data collection has been completed.

< Prev		Next >