Hustlers and tricksters: Colonialism, the war on drugs, and survival strategies of people who inject drugs

This ethnographic study examines the income-generating strategies of people who inject drugs (PWID) in Puerto Rico, focusing on how colonialism, economic dispossession, and structural violence shape daily survival. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2023 in urban and rural settings, we document revuleo, hustling practices such as panhandling, informal labor, and low-level drug sales that PWID use to sustain their drug consumption. We highlight the resourcefulness of PWID who seize any available opportunity, legal or informal, turning crises such as Hurricane Maria and shifts in treatment delivery during COVID-19 into new hustling strategies. Hustling reveals the creativity of marginalized people navigating a failing neoliberal development model, widening inequality, and the ongoing impacts of the so-called war on drugs. The study contributes to decolonizing addiction research by centering PWID's lived experiences and situating them in historical, political, and economic contexts. It challenges dominant biomedical models that portray addiction solely as a chronic, relapsing brain disease and calls for decriminalization and harm-reduction approaches that address colonial legacies and the perspectives of marginalized groups.