Ganja in Jamaica (1975)

Ganja in Jamaica

A medical anthropological study of chronic marihuana use

Publication

Author	Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas
Publisher	Mouton
Place	The Hague
Published	1975
Pages	xx + 205
Language	English
Series	New Babylon: Studies in the Social Sciences, 26

Coverage

Subjects	Cannabis, Medical anthropology, Jamaica, Chronic cannabis use, Ethnobotany
Relevance	The first multidisciplinary field-and-clinic study of long-term cannabis use in a working-class population and the source of the India-to-Jamaica diffusion argument for the Caribbean ganja complex, including the grade vocabulary that Jamaican usage inherited from indentured East Indian labourers.

Access

ISBN	90-279-7731-3
DOI	10.1515/9783110812077

Ganja in Jamaica is a 1975 study by the American anthropologists Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas, subtitled A medical anthropological study of chronic marihuana use and published by Mouton in its New Babylon series. It presents the findings of the Jamaica Project, an investigation by the Research Institute for the Study of Man in collaboration with the University of the West Indies and supported by the United States National Institute of Mental Health, into the effects of chronic ganja smoking among Jamaican working-class men.

The study combined eighteen months of anthropological fieldwork in seven communities with clinical and laboratory examination of sixty hospitalised subjects. Its foreword describes the project as the first undertaken in medical anthropology and the first intensive multidisciplinary study of cannabis use and users to be published.

Its second, third and fourth chapters set the Jamaican material against the record of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, trace the island's early prohibition and record the Jamaican grade vocabulary. They argue that the Jamaican ganja complex descends from the Indian one by way of indentured labour.

Authors

Vera Rubin was an anthropologist of the Caribbean and director of the Research Institute for the Study of Man, which she founded in New York in 1955. In the same year as Ganja in Jamaica she edited Cannabis and Culture, the cross-cultural volume from the 1973 Chicago conference, which carries four chapters on Jamaica by members of the project team.

Lambros Comitas was professor of anthropology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and associate director of the Research Institute for the Study of Man. He contributed "The Social Nexus of Ganja in Jamaica" to Cannabis and Culture.

Background

In January 1970 the Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse of the National Institute of Mental Health invited the Research Institute for the Study of Man, incorporated in 1955 as a non-profit scientific and educational organisation, to consider a study of chronic cannabis smoking in the West Indies. The Institute proposed Jamaica, where cannabis use was widespread in the working class and where collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of the West Indies was thought possible. The work was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health under contract 42-70-97.

Because cultivation, use and possession were prohibited in Jamaica, the project required negotiated assurances before it could begin. The Minister of Health gave an undertaking of government cooperation and the Commissioner of Police indicated that the constabulary would remain neutral and would not harass field researchers or subjects. Hospital administrative procedures were amended to preserve subject anonymity.

One element of the original design was abandoned. The project had intended to study the short-term acute effects of smoking, but no Jamaican legislation permitted an exemption allowing cannabis to be smoked on hospital premises. An expert committee appointed by the University's Vice Chancellor advised against University participation in such research. The clinical work was confined to long-term effects.

Fieldwork began at the end of June 1970 and ran for eighteen months. The first subjects were admitted to the University Hospital in November 1970 and analysis was completed in February 1972. The project report, Effects of Chronic Smoking of Cannabis in Jamaica, went to the National Institute of Mental Health in March 1972. Forty-five professionals worked on the project. Smokers were classified as chronic users if they had smoked a minimum of three spliffs daily for at least ten years; controls were confirmed non-smokers who may have had limited past experience.

Argument

The second chapter, on the ethnohistory of cannabis, sets the Jamaican material against the record of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission and argues for direct India-to-Jamaica diffusion. Rubin and Comitas hold that the types of use, critical parts of the ganja lexicon and much of the justificatory ideology around ganja support that claim. The grade vocabulary is set out in a footnote to that chapter:

In India there are three grades of cannabis, varying in pharmacological intensity: charas, the most potent; ganja, the second grade; and bhang, the mildest form. Jamaicans use the term kali rather than charas for the most potent grade. Kali is the Hindi term for buds and was undoubtedly adopted from the East Indians.

— Rubin and Comitas, Ganja in Jamaica, p. 18, n. 24

The footnote records a three-term graded system in which ganja occupies the middle rank, charas the top rank in India and kali the top rank in Jamaica, with bhang the mildest. The authors add that kali is also a Swahili word for strong or sharp and judge the Jamaican usage probably independent of that.

The third chapter, on ganja legislation, traces the colonial-era emergence of the issue. The authors find nothing in departmental reports, Legislative Council minutes, Governor's reports or newspaper accounts to indicate that ganja was treated as a major social issue before the turn of the century. The first official mention appeared in the lunatic asylum report for 1883–84. The 1892–93 report of the Protector of Immigrants recorded a belief that East Indians were using ganja. The question was raised in the Legislative Council during debate on the International Opium Convention signed at The Hague. Jamaica amended its consenting document to add prohibitions on the importation and cultivation of Cannabis sativa. The resulting 1913 ordinance did not specify possession or use as criminal acts.

The fourth chapter, on the ganja complex, reports that the Indian roots had for practical purposes been forgotten by the time of the study and that some culturally militant Black users instead claimed Africa as the origin, citing Biblical references to the herb. On prevalence, the authors record that various sources had estimated between one-third and two-thirds of the lower class as users. Against those figures they set a survey in one of the seven study communities, which found that half of all males over fifteen were smokers, half of them heavy smokers; 7.3 per cent were former smokers and 20 per cent non-smokers, with 22.3 per cent unclassifiable.

Findings

Shafer's foreword summarises the results. The study found no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among the subjects and no significant psychiatric, psychological or medical differences between smokers and controls. The single medical finding of interest, presented as a trend rather than a result, was functional hypoxia among heavy long-term smokers. Because ganja was customarily mixed with tobacco and ganja smokers were generally also heavy cigarette smokers, the authors could not separate the effects and suggested that smoking as such might be the factor.

The foreword further records that the primary use of ganja by working-class males was as an energiser serving the values of the work ethic and that no drug escalation was observed. It also records medicinal use by non-smokers and ganja taken in teas by women and children. Little correlation was found between ganja use and crime, except insofar as possession and cultivation were themselves offences.

Contents

The volume opens with a foreword by Raymond Philip Shafer, chairman of the United States National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Twelve chapters follow.

1. Introduction
2. Notes on the ethnohistory of cannabis
3. Ganja legislation
4. The ganja complex
5. Acute effects of ganja smoking in a natural setting
6. The clinical studies
7. Respiratory function and hematology
8. Psychiatry and electroencephalography
9. Psychological assessment
10. Attitudes and reactions to ganja
11. Cultural expectations and predisposition to ganja
12. Cannabis, society and culture

Eight appendices follow, at pp. 171–195. The first reprints an editorial from the Daily Gleaner entitled "Ganja Smoking as a Danger to the Natives of this Colony"; the second summarises ganja legislation in Jamaica from 1913 to 1972; the third gives laboratory analyses of ganja samples. The remainder cover the demographic profile of the clinical sample, chromosome studies and hormone levels, estimated THC content of cannabis in the United States and elsewhere, responses on first and subsequent experiences with ganja and a life expectancy table.

Reception

The volume was reviewed in Science by the sociologist Erich Goode and in the Hispanic American Historical Review by Joseph Zentner.

Gabriel Nahas published "Critique of a study on ganja in Jamaica" in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1985, ten years after the volume appeared.

Stub

This section is incomplete. Add sources and expand it.

See also

• Cannabis and Culture (1975) – Rubin's companion volume from the same year and publisher
• Cannabis: Global Histories (2021) – later edited volume on the global history of cannabis
• Ganja – the substance article, on which the book's grade vocabulary bears
• Ganja Matters – recent volume on cannabis policy
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission – the 1894 inquiry against which the authors set the Jamaican material