After Réunion became a French department in 1946, new milieus made the island more favourable to zamal use: Comorian labourers in shanty-towns around Le Port and Saint-Denis collected cannabis from the countryside with Mauritian vendors, and part of the crop was clandestinely exported to Mauritius.[1] Alongside them, continental French youth and lycée students began smoking on the beach or outside schools, joined by dance-orchestra musicians, prostitutes and marginal figures; most were occasional users, some formed groups of habitual users.[1] The authorities decided to deal quietly, judging the phenomenon no social menace.[1] The psychiatric hospital received youthful smokers only twice: in 1971 a group initiated by members of a travelling Mauritian orchestra, harvesting zamal in the island's eastern fields, whom the psychiatrists declined to admit and placed under surveillance until they quit; and in 1973 a harder case, a community of 17- to 20-year-olds led by a Frenchwoman artist who was hospitalised for a psychotic episode, briefly hospitalised all together, then sent home under surveillance while still smoking daily.[1] Benoist stresses that cannabis is completely overshadowed on the island by the far worse problem of alcoholism.[1]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Réunion here.
References
- Réunion: Cannabis in a Pluricultural and Polyethnic SocietyJean Benoist · In Cannabis and Culture, edited by Vera Rubin · Mouton · 1975 · Sections I–II, printed pp. 228–234; new modes of consumption, Comorian workers and Mauritius export, youth groups, 1971 and 1973 clinical cases, authorities' quiet response, alcohol contrast
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.