Publication: Oceania
Publication Date: 01-NOV-06
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Halvaksz, Jamon ; Lipset, David
Article Excerpt
Cannabis sativa, or marijuana, has circulated throughout the world for several thousand years (Abel 1980). Today, the drug is widely transacted in the insular Pacific, where it began to enter local consumption and circulation in the early 1980s. (1) In turn, it has been fed back into the global economy through the informal economy and, to a limited extent, through international trafficking. Pacific states, while supporting the World System, condemn and sanction marijuana and are supported in this stance by international treaties. However, marijuana remains a morally ambiguous and especially problematic presence in the region. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the efficacy of the state's response has been to make local communities critical sites of regulation and debate about the value of the drug. As such, marijuana seems to have constituted a new moment in the contradictory dialogue between indigenous Pacific, state-based and global assertions of moral agency and meaning. In the rapid spread of this drug through regional contexts, we may read a more complicated power relationship than was instituted during the previous arrivals of drug-bearing foreigners, such as those who brought betel nut and kava prior to Western contact, or the European masters who introduced twist tobacco in the colonial era. (2) Foster (2002) has argued that engagement with market consumption and bureaucratic forms of competition may be viewed as part of the process of nation-building in PNG. By contrast, the consumption or transaction of marijuana in a sense both subverts and engages the citizen with the nation-state.
However, little or no ethnographic investigation, fine-grained or otherwise, has been done on either this or the many other problems that may be raised in connection with cultivation, consumption and traffic of marijuana in PNG, much less elsewhere in the Pacific. Widespread as it may have become, in this introductory essay we can therefore do little more than offer a few glimpses of its presence in contemporary PNG, e.g., in the past 20-25 years. What we are able to do is this. We survey the legal context of its production and circulation both in PNG and throughout the Pacific. We assess how the drug has been depicted in other Pacific states. While our primary focus is on PNG, our point in offering these broader perspectives, of course, is to begin to outline political and comparative issues. Our overall goal is to encourage rigorous discussion of the relationship among society, the state and global capitalism that the drug constitutes, in addition to the many other, rather smaller-scale problems it raises about the construction of and debate about its meaning at the local-level.
STATE-BASED AND INTERNATIONAL REGULATION
Laws regulating cannabis in the Pacific are linked both to a history of colonial administration and more recent efforts arising from international treaties. During the colonial period, Pacific Island peoples were subject to the same regulations as the states that ruled them. While increasingly independent, the legal structure of the postcolonies continues to adhere to conventions signed by their former governments. In comparison to other Pacific states, Papua New Guinea has thus far been less responsive to marijuana's growing presence. Here we consider some of the reasons for this.
Formal recognition of cannabis as a global problem dates to the International Opium Convention of 1925. While largely concerned with the suppression of opium in East Asia, it also banned export of cannabis to countries where the use of that substance was not customary. Effectively, this made cannabis illegal throughout the Pacific since it was not cultivated or consumed prior to colonization. Subsequent treaties, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (United Nations 1961) and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971 (United Nations 1971), set guidelines for regulation of all narcotic and psychotropic substances, and thereby established cannabis as illegal among the states that agreed to these guidelines. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 allowed for local variation and acceptance of cannabis use according to various local customs, but strenuously called for regulation of trafficking and cultivation where it was permitted for medical, customary, or, in the case of hemp, resource needs. The Convention did not set exact penalties, but did require that those who break laws created in response to this treaty be imprisoned, fined, or provided with mandatory treatment. For many Pacific Island states, adherence to this treaty was agreed to prior to independence. However, they have continued to uphold these treaties, by focusing legislation and spending political-legal capital on regulation (see table 1). (3)
The most recent treaty, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988 (United Nations 1988), has strengthened powers of extradition, and regulations regarding trafficking by sea (including the search and seizure of ships outside national waters). Consumption was also more strictly limited, with mandates for ending traditional use within 25 years. This UN treaty has had the effect of enforcing ideas of drug use as a legal problem and reduced emphasis on it as a medical or public health concern. Today, international concern persists regarding cannabis, as the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB, established in 1968 under The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961) continues to press for treaty compliance by all UN member states. In an April 2003 speech, its chair, Dr. P. Emafo, declared:
There is consensus that cannabis is a harmful drug. The Board is, therefore, concerned over debates on its decriminalization and legalization. Such debates divert attention from reality, foster dissemination of misleading messages, ignore concerns for public health, undermine effective global drug control efforts and may promote increased illicit supply and demand for drugs. (Emafo 2003)
Often critiqued for ham-handed intolerance of alternative views of cannabis and hemp, and policies that closely mirror the U.S. government, the INCB remains a powerful force in determining international and national laws (Jelsma and Metaal 2004). While differences persist among international bodies that oversee licit and illicit substances, the INCB remains the main regulatory body for cannabis. Debates have emerged over whether or not cannabis possesses legitimate medicinal properties, and the import of sustainable development and crop replacement as against eradication policies. More broadly, states divide, as along many issues, between north and south, rich and poor....
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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