Highlights
- Drug markets are expanding throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
- Emergent drug markets in Kisumu, Kenya, are dynamic and fueling injection drug use.
- Injectors report availability of heroin and cocaine in Kisumu.
- Availability of cocaine is pharmacologically unconfirmed, but opens up questions about the social meanings of drug markets.
- Drug surveillance, education, and further ethnographic inquiry are needed in emergent drug markets in sub-Saharan Africa.
Background
Illegal
drug markets are shaped by multiple forces, including local actors and broader
economic, political, social, and criminal justice systems that intertwine to
impact health and social wellbeing. Ethnographic analyses that interrogate
multiple dimensions of drug markets may offer both applied and theoretical
insights into drug use, particularly in developing nations where new markets
and local patterns of use traditionally have not been well understood. This
paper explores the emergent drug market in Kisumu, western Kenya, where our
research team recently documented evidence of injection drug use.
Methods
Our
exploratory study of injection drug use was conducted in Kisumu from 2013-2014.
We draw on 151 surveys, 29 in-depth interviews, and 8 months of ethnographic
fieldwork to describe the drug market from the perspective of injectors,
focusing on their perceptions of the market and reports of drug use therein.
Results
Injectors
described a dynamic market in which the availability of drugs and proliferation
of injection drug use have taken on growing importance in Kisumu. In addition
to reports of white and brown forms of heroin and concerns about drug
adulteration in the market, we unexpectedly documented widespread perceptions
of cocaine availability and injection in Kisumu. Examining price data and
socio-pharmacological experiences of cocaine injection left us with unconfirmed
evidence of its existence, but opened further possibilities about how the chaos
of new drug markets and diffusion of injection-related beliefs and practices
may lend insight into the sociopolitical context of western Kenya.
Conclusions
We
suggest a need for expanded drug surveillance, education and programming
responsive to local conditions, and further ethnographic inquiry into the
social meanings of emergent drug markets in Kenya and across sub-Saharan
Africa.
Purchase full article at: http://goo.gl/ZxxtwQ
By: Jennifer
L. Syvertsen, Spala Ohaga, Kawango Agot, Margarita Dimova, Andy Guise, Tim Rhodes, Karla D. Wagner
Affiliations
Department of Anthropology The Ohio State University 4046
Smith Laboratory 174 W. 18th Ave. Columbus, OH 43210-1106, USA
Correspondence
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 614 247 6815; fax: +1 614 292
4155.
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