This very readable introduction presents a series of perspectives and reflections on the worlds of drug-taking, drug-seeking and public policy. It looks candidly at the world of drug and alcohol use, abuse, and control, presenting many sides of major issues, the history and patterns of abuse, and coverage of the major drugs (heroin, cocaine, crack, prescription drugs, marijuana, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and club drugs).
This provocative and controversial book rejects the popular pablum of more laws, more money, more enforcement personnel, and more jails as the road to victory in the "war on drugs." Author Steven Wisotsky masterfully documents the failure of the drug war and the erroneous premise central to its destructive and doomed strategy: the idea that drug taking controls human behavior; that drugs "cause" physical dependency. Americans must move beyond the war on drugs by repudiating their obsessive preoccupation with controlling or prohibiting drugs. Instead, we must replace this mindset with a new view that acknowledges individual freedom and the power of directing our choices toward responsible human behavior. According to Wisotsky, the idea of "waging war" on drugs is central to the problem rather than a fundamental part of any solution. He takes the Reagan-Bush-Bennett campaign to task for its failed efforts to cut the supply of drugs, reduce public demand, and enforce laws regarding the sale and distribution of controlled substances. Wisotsky contends that the war on drugs will remain inadequate so long as society continues to be seduced by the battle cries of its own stepped-up combat in which the "enemy" (drugs) must be eradicated at all cost. The rationale for doing battle has become so embedded in the public mind that we no longer recognize the need for a critical review of social policy, strategy, or the methods needed to achieve our desired goals. Have we simply created a new type of Prohibition, which is destined to fail? And if this is the case, then what does it say about our society? Have we lost the ability to reflect critically on our social motives and purposes, as well as our justification for the actions we take, simply because we've declared "war" on the "enemy" and we aren't going to stop the good fight until we've "won"? Beyond the War on Drugs offers hard-hitting arguments to support the growing public opinion that this war, as it is currently conceived, cannot be won and ought not to be fought. Wisotsky argues persuasively for a reassessment of this struggle. We must go beyond the war on drugs to develop a public policy that acknowledges human intelligence, free choice, and individual responsibility.
The New York Times Bestseller What if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari's journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question--and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix. One of Johann Hari's earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realized he had addiction in his family. Confused, not knowing what to do, he set out and traveled over 30,000 miles over three years to discover what really causes addiction--and what really solves it. He uncovered a range of remarkable human stories--of how the war on drugs began with Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer, being stalked and killed by a racist policeman; of the scientist who discovered the surprising key to addiction; and of the countries that ended their own war on drugs--with extraordinary results. Chasing the Scream is the story of a life-changing journey that transformed the addiction debate internationally--and showed the world that the opposite of addiction is connection.
One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.
Historian Isaac Campos combines wide-ranging archival research with the latest scholarship on the social and cultural dimensions of drug-related behavior in this telling of marijuana's remarkable history in Mexico. Introduced in the sixteenth century by the Spanish, cannabis came to Mexico as an industrial fiber and symbol of European empire. But, Campos demonstrates, as it gradually spread to indigenous pharmacopoeias, then prisons and soldiers' barracks, it took on both a Mexican name--marijuana--and identity as a quintessentially "Mexican" drug. A century ago, Mexicans believed that marijuana could instantly trigger madness and violence in its users, and the drug was outlawed nationwide in 1920. Home Grown thus traces the deep roots of the antidrug ideology and prohibitionist policies that anchor the drug-war violence that engulfs Mexico today. Campos also counters the standard narrative of modern drug wars, which casts global drug prohibition as a sort of informal American cultural colonization. Instead, he argues, Mexican ideas were the foundation for notions of "reefer madness" in the United States. This book is an indispensable guide for anyone who hopes to understand the deep and complex origins of marijuana's controversial place in North American history.
Where did the regulatory underpinnings for the global drug wars come from? This book is the first fully-focused history of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the bedrock of the modern multilateral drug control system and the focal point of global drug regulations and prohibitions. Although far from the propagator of the drug wars, the UN enabled the creation of a uniform global legal framework to effectively legalise, or regulate, their pursuit. This book thereby answers the question of where the international legal framework for drug control came from, what state interests informed its development and how complex diplomatic negotiations resulted in the current regulatory system, binding states into an element of global policy uniformity.
A revealing look at the history and legacy of the "War on Drugs" Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," the United States government has spent over a trillion dollars fighting a losing battle. In recent years, about 1.5 million people have been arrested annually on drug charges—most of them involving cannabis—and nearly 500,000 Americans are currently incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, as a response to the dire human and financial costs, Americans are fast losing their faith that a War on Drugs is fair, moral, or effective. In a rare multi-faceted overview of the underground drug market, featuring historical and ethnographic accounts of illegal drug production, distribution, and sales, The War on Drugs: A History examines how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy. At the same time, the collection explores how aggressive anti-drug policies produced a “deviant” form of globalization that offered economically marginalized people an economic life-line as players in a remunerative transnational supply and distribution network of illicit drugs. While several essays demonstrate how government enforcement of drug laws disproportionately punished marginalized suppliers and users, other essays assess how anti-drug warriors denigrated science and medical expertise by encouraging moral panics that contributed to the blanket criminalization of certain drugs. By analyzing the key issues, debates, events, and actors surrounding the War on Drugs, this timely and impressive volume provides a deeper understanding of the role these policies have played in making our current political landscape and how we can find the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime.
We’re losing the “war on drugs”—but the fight isn’t over yet Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs examines our current anti-drug programs and policies, explains why they have failed, and presents a plan to fix them. Author Thomas C. Rowe, who has been educating college students on recreational drug use for nearly 30 years, exposes the truth about anti-drug programs he believes were conceived in ignorance of the drugs themselves and motivated by racial/cultural bias. This powerful book advocates a shift in federal spending to move funds away from the failed elements of the “war on drugs” toward policies with a more realistic chance to succeed—the drug courts, education, and effective treatment. Common myths and misconceptions about drugs have produced anti-drug programs that don’t work, won’t work, and waste millions of dollars. Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs looks at how—and why—this has happened and what can be done to correct it. The book is divided into “How did we get into this mess?” which details the history of anti-narcotic legislation, how drug agencies evolved, and the role played by Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962; “What works and what doesn’t work,” which looks at the failure of interdiction efforts and the negative consequences that have resulted with a particular focus on the problems of prisons balanced against the drug court system; and a third section that serves as an overview of various recreational drugs, considers arguments for and against drug legalization, and offers suggestions for more effective methods than our current system allows. Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs also examines: the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics current regulations and structures current federal sentencing guidelines current state of the courts and the prison system mandatory sentencing and what judges think interdiction for heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine, and marijuana early education efforts the DARE program drug use trends drug treatment models the debate over legalization Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs also includes several appendices of federal budget figures, cocaine and heroin purity and price, and federal bureau of prisons statistics. This unique book is required reading for anyone concerned about the drug problem in the United States and what is—and isn’t—being done to correct it.
A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich” (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. “Delightfully nuts.”—The New Yorker
This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the practice of disappearances in Mexico, from the period of the so-called 'dirty war' to the current crisis of disappearances associated with the country's 'war on drugs', during which more than 80,000 people have disappeared. The volume brings together contributions by distinguished scholars from Mexico, Argentina and Europe, who focus their chapters on four broad axes of enquiry. In Part I, chapters examine the phenomenon of disappearances in its historical and present-day forms, and the struggles for memory around the disappeared in Mexico with reference to Argentina. Part II addresses the political dimensions of disappearances, focusing on the specificities that this practice acquires in the context of the counterinsurgency struggle of the 1970s and the so-called 'war on drugs'. The third section situates the issue within the framework of human rights law, by examining the conceptual and legal aspects of disappearances. The final chapters explore the social movement of the relatives of the disappeared, showing how their search for disappeared loved ones involves bodily and affective experiences as well as knowledge production. The volume thus aims to further our understanding of the crisis of disappearances in Mexico without, however, losing sight of the historic origins of the phenomenon.
