Disaster and Loss: Drug Research in an Urban Community

Widespread drug use and drug trafficking in inner-city communities have destroyed important social and physical assets of community life, which enhanced and supported residents' personal and social well-being. This article describes ethnographic methodologies used to gain access to a central city drug-using population for the study of the intergenerational transmission of drug use. Key informant narratives report community and family asset losses. A paradigm of social disaster is presented to explicate the physical, emotional, social, and economic consequences of drug use and drug trafficking in urban communities. It is argued that researchers have not examined the social and moral effects of drug use in inner-city communities. A social disaster paradigm may help practitioners to develop practical stratagems to effect social change in urban communities that have been blighted by prevalent drug use and drug profiteering.