The relationship of ecological containment and heroin practices

Abstract

In this chapter, we address how ecological and spatial factors contribute to behaviors that led to heroin use among Mexican-origin persons in the United States. Most of this contemporary drug using population is embedded in socio-economic environments that shape heroin use and other deviant behaviors. Using the experiences of San Antonio's Mexican American population, the chapter illustrates how the dynamics and consequences of heroin use among this group can best be understood when considering the intersection of context and culture from both a historical and current framework. Specifically, it addresses how the constellation of social-historical patterns of inequality, ecological and deviance containment, and proximity to vice districts in San Antonio sustained and exacerbated heroin use among this population. What emerges from this analysis is how these historical precedents together with ecological and urban spatial processes provide a theoretical framework that helps to explain Mexican American heroin practices. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.