Substance and Drug Abuse in The Bahamas and the Caribbean , 1970-2017 : A Bibliography

An objective for the compilation of this bibliography is to provide a list of resources that address substance and drug abuse in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean from its beginnings in the 1980s to present day by medical professionals, academics, policy makers and government officials. Therefore, research was conducted to compile as full a bibliographic listing of resources as possible, including links for digital documents. This bibliography does not include everything written about drug and substance abuse in The Bahamas and Caribbean, but it is a guide and starting point for researchers. 1 Antoinette P. Pinder-Darling and Virginia C. F. Ballance, University Libraries, University of The Bahamas E-mail: antoinette.pinder@ub.edu.bs APA reference: Pinder-Darling, A. P., & Ballance, V. C. F. (2017). Substance and drug abuse in The Bahamas and the Caribbean, 1970-2017: A bibliography. International Journal of Bahamian Studies, 23, 67-77. https://doi.org/10.15362/ijbs.v23i0.284 Introduction In 2011 the Organization of American States (OAS) initiated a pan-Caribbean project focusing on drug demand reduction in the university environment and the wider community. The College of The Bahamas participated in the initiative, known as “A Caribbean University Interdisciplinary and Integrated Drug Demand Reduction Proposal,” by implementing drug-related course content throughout the curriculum and by implementing drug-use prevention activities on its campuses and in the wider community. A secondary objective was to encourage scholarly research on drug issues. To facilitate the research objective, a bibliography of resources addressing the issues and struggles of substance and drug abuse in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean region was deemed to be a useful outcome of the project. Drug and substance abuse in the region is a plaguing reality, touching everyone, from the public to healthcare providers to policy makers. It is important to make literature available to researchers for a more systematic study of the topic both locally and throughout the region. Therefore, a literature review was conducted to compile a bibliographic listing of resources, providing a complete reference citation for each item as well as annotating some of the studies with a brief abstract to help potential users evaluate the documents’ contents. For all electronically available materials a linking URL or DOI (digital object identifier) has been provided to ease retrieval of the document. Compiling a bibliography of Bahamian and Caribbean resources is fraught with problems. In The Bahamas there is no national library with the mandate to collect all publications written by Bahamians, documents with 68 Pinder-Darling & Ballance. Substance Abuse in The Bahamas: A Bibliography. International Journal of Bahamian Studies Vol. 23 (2017) significant content about The Bahamas or items published in the country. There is no system of obligatory legal deposit of all publications produced locally, nor is there a unified government publications department responsible for the dissemination of all official publications. In addition, few, if any, publications emanating from government departments are supplied with an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) which would assist with bibliographic control of publications–ensuring that they are catalogued and recorded in bibliographic databases. Further complicating the effort is that in this age of in-house desktop and web-publishing, authors and publishers can produce books, conference proceedings, reports, and other publications with relative ease, but such publications are produced in small numbers, are difficult to locate or may be produced in multiple versions. As a result, researchers compiling bibliographies must scour traditional and non-traditional sources to find all published materials on a topic. To produce as complete a resource list as possible, we searched Google, Google Scholar and EbscoHost databases using the terms “drug abuse,” “substance abuse,” and “drug control” to retrieve articles published in scholarly journals. We sought resources relating to The Bahamas and the Caribbean in general. We also searched for World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization and other international organization documents using the World Health Organization IRIS database. The WorldCat database provided access to a wide range of library online catalogues where we found many monographs and journal articles. This bibliography does not include all materials written about drug use and abuse of other substances within The Bahamas and the Caribbean but should be a guide and starting point for researchers and students alike to access current and vetted resources. Many more references to books, reports and articles have been added to the original bibliography prepared for the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (whose acronym is CICAD) in 2015. Items which were deemed to be valuable and important contributions to the literature were digitized and added to the Digital Library of the Caribbean, thereby ensuring access to the document in years to come. All entries in the bibliography are in the American Psychological Association or APA 6 edition style and include the updated format for digital object identifiers. BAHAMAS Allen, D. (Ed.). (1987). The cocaine crisis. New York: Plenum. This early volume documents the devastating effects of crack, then a new cocaine preparation, and its extraordinary addicting properties. The Bahamian experience with crack provided an early warning about the extreme personal and social dangers of this drug. The book includes the proceedings of the first International Drug Symposium on Cocaine held in 1985 as well as papers presented at the symposium and articles published first in scholarly journals. Allen, D. F., & Jekel, J. F., (1991). Crack: The broken promise. Basingstoke, Hampshire, Eng.: Macmillan Academic and Professional. Anderson, T. J. (2003). Curriculum matters: A grounded analysis of drug education in public primary and junior high schools in The Bahamas. (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Archer, C. (2003). Bahamian alcoholism (1955-2003) and other drug abuse (19682003): A works compilation. Nassau, Bahamas: Colmar. Archer, C. B. (1981). The handbook on alcoholism in The Bahamas. Nassau, Pinder-Darling & Ballance. Substance Abuse in The Bahamas: A Bibliography. 69 International Journal of Bahamian Studies Vol. 23 (2017) Bahamas: Colmar. As far back as 1975, many of physicians in The Bahamas were becoming aware that there were chemicals being abused other than alcohol, marijuana, or prescription drugs. Heroin, PCP, but more significantly cocaine, were being used. In 1982, cocaine began to make its presence known in The Bahamas and by 1983 a full-blown epidemic had arrived. Bahamas Drug Information System. (2003). Annual national report, 2001. Nassau, Bahamas: Author. http://www.unodc.org/pdf/barbados/baha mas_drug_report_2001.pdf Bahamas. National Anti-Drug Secretariat. (2010). Bahamas drug information system annual report, 2009. Nassau, Bahamas: Ministry of National Security. Retrieved from http://dloc.com/l/AA00059019/00001 The annual reports of Bahamas Drug Information System provide information on the drug consumption in The Bahamas and an overview of the drug situation and trends including a synopsis of illicit supply and control of drugs, drug use and abuse, treatment and rehabilitation, morbidity and mortality, and specific drugs which include cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs. Bahamas. Commission of Inquiry. (1984). Report of the Commission of Inquiry: appointed to inquire into the illegal use of The Bahamas for the transshipment of dangerous drugs destined for the United States of America, November 1983December 1984. Nassau, Bahamas: Government Printing. In 1983 of a Commission of Inquiry was struck to investigate the drug trade and official corruption in The Bahamas. As a result of the Inquiry, five government ministers either resigned or were dismissed. Bahamas. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (1992). Bahamas narcotics control report, 1991. Nassau: Author. (23 p.) Bahamas. National Anti-Drug Secretariat. (2004). National anti-drug plan of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, 20042009. Nassau, Bahamas: Author. This 152-page resource includes community drug use survey results along as well as bibliographical references and appendices. Bahamas. National Anti-Drug Secretariat. (2012). National anti-drug strategy of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, 20122016. Nassau, Bahamas: Author. http://www.cicad.oas.org/fortalecimiento_i nstitucional/planesnacionales/Bahamas_20 12_2016.pdf (54 p., bibliography) Bahamas. National-Anti Drug Secretariat. (2016). The drug situation in The Bahamas, 2015. Nassau, Bahamas: National Drugs Observatory. https://www.bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/co nnect/156c8ff0-3c24-4c8e-86e28c053800ee66/Drug+Situation+Report+201 5.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&C ACHEID=156c8ff0-3c24-4c8e-86e28c053800ee66 (102 p., bibliography) The National Anti-Drug Secretariat will issue annual reports going forward from 2015. Bahamas. National Anti-Drug Secretariat. (2017). The Commonwealth of The Bahamas national anti-drug strategy, 2017-2021: Refocusing our attention on those most vulnerable in the world drug problem. Nassau, Bahamas: Ministry of National Security. https://www.bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/co nnect/b1197f59-5900-4226-94a9af511351b1bf/National+antiDrug+Strategy+20172021.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url &CACHEID=b1197f59-5900-4226-94a9af511351b1bf 70 Pinder-Darling & Ballance. Substance Abuse in The Bahamas: A Bibliography. International Journal of Bahamian Studies Vol. 23 (2017) National Anti-Drug Strategy for 2017-2021 is the framework in which action will be taken over the next five years. It represents a shift in focus from treating the drug problem as a criminal justice issue to a public health approach, a key objective


Introduction
In 2011 the Organization of American States (OAS) initiated a pan-Caribbean project focusing on drug demand reduction in the university environment and the wider community. The College of The Bahamas participated in the initiative, known as "A Caribbean University Interdisciplinary and Integrated Drug Demand Reduction Proposal," by implementing drug-related course content throughout the curriculum and by implementing drug-use prevention activities on its campuses and in the wider community. A secondary objective was to encourage scholarly research on drug issues.
To facilitate the research objective, a bibliography of resources addressing the issues and struggles of substance and drug abuse in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean region was deemed to be a useful outcome of the project. Drug and substance abuse in the region is a plaguing reality, touching everyone, from the public to healthcare providers to policy makers. It is important to make literature available to researchers for a more systematic study of the topic both locally and throughout the region. Therefore, a literature review was conducted to compile a bibliographic listing of resources, providing a complete reference citation for each item as well as annotating some of the studies with a brief abstract to help potential users evaluate the documents' contents. For all electronically available materials a linking URL or DOI (digital object identifier) has been provided to ease retrieval of the document.
Compiling a bibliography of Bahamian and Caribbean resources is fraught with problems. In The Bahamas there is no national library with the mandate to collect all publications written by Bahamians, documents with significant content about The Bahamas or items published in the country. There is no system of obligatory legal deposit of all publications produced locally, nor is there a unified government publications department responsible for the dissemination of all official publications. In addition, few, if any, publications emanating from government departments are supplied with an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) which would assist with bibliographic control of publications-ensuring that they are catalogued and recorded in bibliographic databases. Further complicating the effort is that in this age of in-house desktop and web-publishing, authors and publishers can produce books, conference proceedings, reports, and other publications with relative ease, but such publications are produced in small numbers, are difficult to locate or may be produced in multiple versions. As a result, researchers compiling bibliographies must scour traditional and non-traditional sources to find all published materials on a topic.
To produce as complete a resource list as possible, we searched Google, Google Scholar and EbscoHost databases using the terms "drug abuse," "substance abuse," and "drug control" to retrieve articles published in scholarly journals. We sought resources relating to The Bahamas and the Caribbean in general. We also searched for World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization and other international organization documents using the World Health Organization IRIS database. The WorldCat database provided access to a wide range of library online catalogues where we found many monographs and journal articles.
This bibliography does not include all materials written about drug use and abuse of other substances within The Bahamas and the Caribbean but should be a guide and starting point for researchers and students alike to access current and vetted resources.
Many more references to books, reports and articles have been added to the original bibliography prepared for the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (whose acronym is CICAD) in 2015. Items which were deemed to be valuable and important contributions to the literature were digitized and added to the Digital Library of the Caribbean, thereby ensuring access to the document in years to come.
All entries in the bibliography are in the American Psychological Association or APA 6 th edition style and include the updated format for digital object identifiers.

Allen, D. (Ed.). (1987). The cocaine crisis. New York: Plenum.
This early volume documents the devastating effects of crack, then a new cocaine preparation, and its extraordinary addicting properties. The Bahamian experience with crack provided an early warning about the extreme personal and social dangers of this drug. The book includes the proceedings of the first International Drug Symposium on Cocaine held in 1985 as well as papers presented at the symposium and articles published first in scholarly journals.

Bahamas: Colmar.
As far back as 1975, many of physicians in The Bahamas were becoming aware that there were chemicals being abused other than alcohol, marijuana, or prescription drugs. Heroin, PCP, but more significantly cocaine, were being used. In 1982, cocaine began to make its presence known in The Bahamas and by 1983 a full-blown epidemic had arrived. The annual reports of Bahamas Drug Information System provide information on the drug consumption in The Bahamas and an overview of the drug situation and trends including a synopsis of illicit supply and control of drugs, drug use and abuse, treatment and rehabilitation, morbidity and mortality, and specific drugs which include cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs.

Report of the Commission of Inquiry: appointed to inquire into the illegal use of The Bahamas for the transshipment of dangerous drugs destined for the United States of America, November 1983-December 1984. Nassau, Bahamas: Government Printing.
In 1983 of a Commission of Inquiry was struck to investigate the drug trade and official corruption in The Bahamas. As a result of the Inquiry, five government ministers either resigned or were dismissed. The National Anti-Drug Secretariat will issue annual reports going forward from 2015.

Bahamas. National Anti-Drug Secretariat. (2017). The Commonwealth of The Bahamas national anti-drug strategy, 2017-2021: Refocusing our attention on those most vulnerable in the world drug problem.
Nassau, Bahamas: Ministry of National Security. https://www.bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/co nnect/b1197f59-5900-4226-94a9-af511351b1bf/National+anti-Drug+Strategy+2017-2021.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url &CACHEID=b1197f59-5900-4226-94a9-af511351b1bf National Anti-Drug Strategy for 2017-2021 is the framework in which action will be taken over the next five years. It represents a shift in focus from treating the drug problem as a criminal justice issue to a public health approach, a key objective being to educate the nation's youth about all aspects of the issue, empowering them to make informed choices about drug use. Anti-Drug Secretariat website is a good resource for statistics and reports.

Bahamas. National Task Force against Drugs. (1984). Report of the National Task Force on drug abuse in The Bahamas. Nassau, Bahamas: Author.
The report emphasizes that The Bahamas faces a severe drug problem, one that is more enculturated rather than epidemic. To determine the sociodemographic information and characteristics of patients aged 18-60 years diagnosed with substance use disorders presenting at the three Government treatment facilities. To determine the prevalence rates of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and poly-substance use disorders in patients presenting to government treatment facilities. The Bahamas has not always had a drug problem but there seems to be a significant change in this area over the years. There is a widespread increase in the quantity of drugs smoked by individual users. These three articles examine the concept of "free-basing" and its introduction to the country during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This resource discusses the high-risk behaviours and treatments associated with cocaine use among Bahamian women. This paper summarizes some of the causes of, and some of the health and social concerns from, the growing illicit drug problem in the 1980s. It suggests that two recent developments, the decentralization of much drug production and modification to chemical laboratories in homes, and the application of increasingly innovative marketing techniques, have brought us to a new and more hazardous era of drug abuse. This study sought to identify the internal and external factors that are predictive of resilience in a sample of 103 urban Bahamian students. Ninth-and 11th-grade students from two local public schools completed surveys.

Jekel
Of special interest to this study was the relationship between school engagement and resilience. Although school engagement was significantly positively related to resilience, it was overshadowed by other factors when included in the resilience regression model. Relationships with parents and non-parental adults, involvement in meaningful activities, and self-efficacy were significant predictors of resilience in this sample of urban Bahamian students. While The Bahamas has significantly reduced poor reproductive health outcomes among adolescents and young adults, data indicate that youth are engaged in sexual risk behaviors. Substance use has been linked to increased risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections in other contexts.  , 61(2), 115-122. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles /PMC2590279/ Psychosis was present in 29 percent of cocaine-disordered patients hospitalized in 1985 during an epidemic of freebase cocaine abuse in The Bahamas. Record reviews revealed that a variety of psychotic phenomenological patterns were present. Prior major mental disorders and increased dosage of cocaine were more common among psychotic than non-psychotic patients. Violent behavior was common among cocaine patients, especially those with psychosis. We conclude that freebase cocaine psychosis is neither rare nor benign. This paper identifies the link between a number of antisocial behaviors and domestic violence in 588 households of college students in Nassau, The Bahamas. The survey indicates that about 21% of college students could be living in homes with domestic violence. Further, domestic violence is associated with other deviant behaviours which may have adverse effects on household members and ultimately the welfare of the nation. The findings suggest that government policy regarding alcohol could be changed to reduce the participation of residents in behaviours linked to domestic violence. Surveys of drug use were conducted among 4,767 junior and senior high school students in 1987 and 74 incarcerated delinquents in 1988 in The Bahamas. It was found that the majority of both groups reported having drunk alcohol, and substantial proportions had also smoked tobacco, although over twice as many delinquents as students had smoked. The results of the studies point to the need for increased drug education in The Bahamas and for efforts involving schools, churches, parents, the media, and Government. Paper presented to the 15th annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association, Trinidad, May, 23-26, 1990. The Bahamas is included in this report. Drug taking has been identified as one of the delinquent behaviors in which some adolescents engage. The use of drugs at an early age is a problem in itself, but it may also lead to or at least be associated with a set of other issues which may be detrimental to the health and well-being of young people. Research suggests that there is a relationship between academic performance and adolescent substance use. Students who use alcohol or illicit drugs have been shown to be at greater risk for performing poorly in school, and vice versa. This report examines youth development in the Caribbean providing an overview of the risks Caribbean youth are facing, evidence of the protective and risk factors underlying the problems youth are facing, an estimation of the costs of risky youth behaviors, and an overview of the policy framework and the types of programs in place that target youth. This book examines the deadly social issue of substance abuse through case studies highlighting 13 different countries from around the world. Using this resource, discover which countries keep the death rates from substance abuse low and how; how countries control the supply of drugs; and in which countries tactics seem to be failing. The answers vary, highlighting the lack of easy solutions, and encouraging readers to think critically.

Jernigan, D. H. (2001). Global status report:
Alcohol and young people. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/6 6795/1/WHO_MSD_MSB_01.1.pdf The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are about 2 billion people worldwide consuming alcoholic beverages, and 76.3 million with diagnosed alcohol use disorders. From a public health perspective, the global burden of alcohol, both in terms of morbidity and mortality, is considerable; alcohol consumption causes 3.2% of deaths (1.8 million) and 4.0% of disability-adjusted life years (58.3 million). Overall, there are causal relationships between alcohol consumption and more than 60 types of disease and injury.