Drugs, Geography of

Historical Drug Geographies

Some drugs have very long traditions and uses associated with specific places. They include the ceremonial drinking of kava root by Pacific islanders, the ritualized ingestion of yagé or aya-huasca by shamans in South America, and the use of hallucinogenic peyote cactus by Midwestern American desert Indians and in the Native American Church. These traditional practices have tended to avoid strict legal control and criminalization but have instead suffered from disuse and marginalization. (Exceptions include the use of kat in Africa and the chewing of betel nut across Asia, both of which can be frowned on but are important in sociocultural and economic terms.) Even traditional drug practices are regaining importance in their respective landscapes, however, and are significant for ecotourism and revenue creation, and for the reinvigoration of indigenous identities and cultural practices. Although such drug use does affect altered human states, it is far less problematic than modern drug abuse and rather is respected for reasons such as those cited above as well as for fostering local native knowledge and links back to more spiritual relationships with natural environments. Arguments for protecting pristine “Nature” and tropical rain forests, in particular, similarly promote renewed reverence for different peoples, places, and practices by claiming that they might hold the key to finding miracle cures for modern ills such as AIDS and cancer. Ethnobotanists therefore work with traditional healers and medicinal foragers in diverse, sometimes very small or isolated, communities as well as with large bioprospecting companies in seeking to convert folklore remedies into modern medicines (and large profits).

From a historical perspective, during the European “Age of Expansion,” for example, maritime explorers voyaged to Asia, Africa, and the Americas in pursuit of wealth from the spice trade and also in the hope of discovering plants with possible medicinal and culinary uses. The territorializing histories of colonialism that then followed subsequently featured valuable new drugs including quinine, caffeine, and tobacco. They have remained important cash crops for some local economies but still depend on transnational corporations, global markets, financial flows, and commodity chains. Such linkages also raise ethical questions as actors in affluent nations must decide whether or not to export products that might not be well distributed and are poorly regulated or costly in the less developed world, or whether to import cheap raw materials that sometimes rely on the exploitation of nonunionized and child labor or monopolistic markets. Alcohol is another drug with spatial manifestations shaped by political economy, history, and culture with attendant moral, legal, and health issues. Its geography connects (and disconnects) licensed venues, state legislation, dry Mormon states, Muslim nations, local temperance movements, and U.S. prohibition, for example, whereas wine regions, terroir, DOC appellation, and viticulture concern the more physical particulars of place, including soil, aspect, and climate.

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