Papua New Guinea

Marijuana

Australian and American expatriates likely introduced marijuana (spak brus) to Papua New Guineans in the 1960s and 1970s. Though illegal, its use disseminated rapidly, especially among younger users. Highly potent “New Guinea Gold” is cultivated widely in isolated highlands communities, where it has replaced food and cash crops owing to its profitability and ease of cultivation. Distribution occurs through small-scale and personal networks. Marijuana grown in highland provinces is trafficked by air, land, and water to coastal ports and to Australians via the Torres Straits. Money and small arms are used to pay for it, and are then used to support urban gangs and political campaigns and tribal warfare. Estimates of use prevalence are difficult to come by, but marijuana use is undoubtedly widespread and user groups include youth and the elderly, male and female, urban and rural, expatriates and nationals alike. Both marijuana possession and trafficking are punishable by from three months to two years in prison.

Alcohol

Alcohol consumption is a significant public health problem. Colonial officials prohibited the consumption of alcohol (“white man's kava”) by natives until 1962. Its consumption nowadays is linked to increasing traffic accidents and fatalities, to increased rates of sickness and death, and to gender-specific violence. The consumption of alcohol and other drugs is thought to often be part of the risk milieu in which transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occurs. South Pacific lager (known as “SP” or “our beer”) and cheap, locally produced [Page 631]forms of vodka, rum, and gin are available alongside some imported beers, wines, an liquors.

Many cultures once turned coconut shoot sap into sweet “green” or fermented alcoholic toddy, and some still do. The contemporary “home-brewing” of highly potent alcohol (stim, baket, and yis) from fruit juice, sugar, and yeast is common but has become subject to law enforcement interdiction. Ethylated and methylated spirits are consumed with sugary-sweet “cordial,” sometimes causing blindness and death. Live Lave, a fruit wine produced in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province, is sold along the Highlands Highway.

Other Drugs and Policies

Like other insular Pacific countries, Papua New Guinea has no formal surveillance system that effectively monitors the distribution, consumption, and damage of licit and illicit drugs. Anthropological research has been conducted into use of marijuana and alcohol, but none into use of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, psilocybin mushrooms, or pharmaceutical opioids and other prescription drugs. Injection drug use is by all accounts extremely rare, but considerable black-market trade in and nonrecreational use of medicinal drugs, especially antibiotics, exists. Papua New Guinea eventually joined the 1961 United Nations (UN) Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and signed the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, but is still mulling over the 1988 UN Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

...