Introduction

The global drug trade and its associated violence, corruption, and human suffering create global problems that involve not only the use and abuse of substances that have traveled across great geographic spaces but also political and military conflict and policy, economic development, and indigenous and ethnic minority rights in the production regions. Drug production and eradication efforts directly affect the stability of many states and relations between states, shaping and sometimes distorting foreign policy (McCoy 1991, 1999; Bagley and Walker 1996; Meyer and Parssinen 1998; Albright 1999; Rohter 1999). Drug production and the efforts to halt it often derail national and local development (Westermeyer 1982; Smith 1992; Goodson 2001) and create potential human rights violations as small-scale producers get caught in the legal crossfire between their dangerous harvest and economic hardship (Sanabria 1992; Kent 1993; Clawson and Lee 1998). External demand and influence, not indigenous cultures, have transformed apparently simple, local agricultural activities into very complex global problems. Psychoactive plants have always played important cultural roles in indigenous and ethnic minority landscapes. After a history of coevolution and experimentation, indigenous societies came to use psychoactive substances derived from plants in a range of religious and healing rituals. Traditional healers, or shamans, consume psychoactive plants to consult with the spiritual world in order to foretell the future and assist patients; patients ingest psychoactive substances to rid themselves of demons or diseases; and indigenous cultures use psychoactive substances in semiritualistic social situations to reinforce social and political bonds or simply as recreation. However, as these traditional cultures come into contact with the outside world, nonindigenous societies often mimic these practices, trying to reach a “new level of consciousness.” The poppy is an example of a psychoactive plant taken out of a traditional context and adopted by cultural outsiders for nonsacred use. In turn, globalization alters the plant’s use and symbolic meaning within its traditional-use hearth area. Several chapters in this volume show that heroin, a derivative of poppies, is used and abused worldwide and in its original hearth, where the plant was once viewed as a sacred medicinal and ritualistic plant. The profane use of opium leaves a trail of destruction in its wake in the form of addicts and soaring HIV rates as the virus spreads through shared heroin needles.