Drug abuse in America affects rural areas with low economic and social resources, such as Georgia’s shrimping communities. Shrimpers have felt pressures from high gas prices, low shrimp costs, and an aging workforce for a decade. Now local drug use rates add to their stress. Job hardships like long hours, strenuous labor, and unpredictable hours, combined with lack of economic advancement and loss of social structures, make the industry prone to drug use. This project uses oral histories from Georgia shrimpers to address how drug use impacts the industry, which drugs are used, and why some shrimpers turned to drugs.
