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Discussions about reducing the harms associated with drug use and antidrug policies are often politicized, infused with questionable data, and unproductive. This paper provides a nonpartisan primer on drug use and drug policy in the United States. It aims to bring those new to drug policy up to speed and provide ideas to researchers and potential research funders about how they could make strong contributions to the field.

In the late 1970s and early'80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard's marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs.In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country's most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law.In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial Drug Wars.“The adventures, the long-gone economy, and the sting that ultimately brought them down and changed US drug policy are meticulously documented and lucidly spun…. Part New Yorker feature-part Jimmy Buffet song.... The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun.” —GQ“[A] rollicking story, Ryan manages to pack in one amusing tale after another.... Jackpot is a rip-roaring good read.” —Charleston City Paper“High times on the high seas: Investigative reporter Ryan recounts the glory days of dope smuggling and their terrible denouement.... A well-told tale of true crime that provides a few good arguments for why it should not be a crime at all.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reads like an international thriller.... chock-a-block with hilarious and hair-raising anecdotes of fast times.” —New York Journal of Books“[A] thoroughly researched account of Operation Jackpot, the drug investigation that ended the reign of South Carolina's ‘gentlemen smugglers,'.... Ryan recreates the era with a vivid, sun-drenched intensity.” —Publishers Weekly

A book that takes you inside the culture of surveillance that pits healthcare providers against their patientsDoctors and pharmacists make critical decisions every day about whether to dispense opioids that alleviate pain but fuel addiction. Faced with a drug crisis that has already claimed more than a million lives, legislatures, courts, and policymakers have enlisted the help of technology in the hopes of curtailing prescriptions and preventing deaths. This book reveals how this “Trojan horse” technology embeds the logics of surveillance in the practice of medicine, forcing care providers to police their patients while undermining public trust and doing untold damage to those at risk.Elizabeth Chiarello draws on hundreds of in-depth interviews with physicians, pharmacists, and enforcement agents across the United States to take readers to the frontlines of the opioid crisis, where medical providers must make difficult choices between treating and punishing the people in their care. States now employ prescription drug monitoring programs capable of tracking all controlled substances within a state and across state lines. Chiarello describes how the reliance on these databases blurs the line between medicine and criminal justice and pits pain sufferers against people with substance-use disorders in a zero-sum game.Shedding critical light on this brave new world of healthcare, Policing Patients urges medical providers to reaffirm their roles as healers and proposes invaluable policy solutions centered on treatment, prevention, and harm reduction.

Beware Euphoria uncovers the roots of America's moral obsession with drug regulation, offering a lively and fascinating history of the nation's racialized fear of intoxication. Challenging the idea that early antidrug laws in the US arose from racial animus, George Fisher instead shows in textured detail how US drug laws were driven by a deep-seated cultural taboo against euphoria and a preoccupation with white moral integrity. From nineteenth-century opium dens to the war on cocaine and cannabis, and more, Fisher offers a vivid tour of the sites of conflict, along with a convincing case for how the moral discourses and social contexts of the day pit drugs against the law. Bringing this history up to the present, Fisher shows how the racial dynamic has changed dramatically. As harsher penalties swell prisons with mostly nonwhite dealers, antidrug laws have come under renewed scrutiny as a tool of racial oppression. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.

Since the early twentieth century, the United States has led a global prohibition effort against certain drugs in which production restriction and criminalization are emphasized over prevention and treatment as means to reduce problematic usage. This “war on drugs” is widely seen to have failed, and periodically decriminalization and legalization movements arise. Debates continue over whether the problems of addiction and crime associated with illicit use of drugs stem from their illegal status or the nature of the drugs themselves. In The Long War on Drugs Anne L. Foster explores the origin of the punitive approach to drugs and its continued appeal despite its obvious flaws. She provides a comprehensive overview, focusing not only on a political history of policy developments but also on changes in medical practices and understanding of drugs. Foster also outlines the social and cultural changes prompting different attitudes about drugs; the racial, environmental, and social justice implications of particular drug policies; and the international consequences of US drug policy.

How did Mexico and Central America become a lawless corridor for conveying narcotics into the United States? How did the drug cartels rise to power, succeeding in institutionalizing the narco-industry? Why have the police and military failed to rein the cartels in? What have been the consequences of the US-led'war on drugs?'William Marcy's Narcostates provides answers to these questions and more. Tracing the evolution of narcotrafficking across the region, and drawing on newly declassified documents, Marcy unravels the tangled web of violence, corruption, and political instability that has empowered drug trafficking organizations since the 1970s.

The roots of a racial reckoning through the lens of cannabis.From the start, the War on Drugs targeted Black, Brown, and Indigenous Americans already disadvantaged by a system stacked against them. Even now, as white Americans who largely escaped the fire capitalize on the legalization movement and a booming cannabis industry, their less fortunate peers continue to suffer the consequences of the systemic racism in policing and failed drug policy that fueled the original crisis. In Waiting to Inhale, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Tahira Rehmatullah issue a powerful call for a racial reckoning and provide a roadmap to redress this deep and abiding injustice.Waiting to Inhale illuminates the stories of those on the front lines of the War on Drugs—the individuals and communities disproportionately harmed, sometimes seemingly beyond repair; the official and social forces ranged against them; and the victims, legal and political activists, and cannabis entrepreneurs who are fighting back. As attitudes toward cannabis are shifting, now is the opportune time, Owusu-Bempah and Rehmatullah submit, to expunge cannabis convictions and make a place in the burgeoning legal cannabis market for Black and other underrepresented groups who have borne the brunt of harsh cannabis laws.A powerful indictment of one of the worst social and political failures in the nation's history, Waiting to Inhale offers an equally powerful vision of the possibility of redemption. Communities can be rebuilt, and racist policies must be overturned in order to give way to a new era of justice.

Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America's long and ineffectual War on Drugs. If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultural politics of the War on Drugs. Even as the focus of drug anxiety has shifted over the years from cocaine to crack and from methamphetamines to opioids, and even as significant strides have been made in representational politics in many areas of pop culture, Latinx people remain an unshakeable fixture in stories narrating the production, distribution, and sale of narcotics. Narcomedia argues that such representations of Latinx people, regardless of the intentions of their creators, are best understood as a cultural front in the War on Drugs. Latinos and Latin Americans are not actually America's drug problem, yet many Americans think otherwise—and that is in no small part because popular culture has largely refused to imagine the drug trade any other way.

In this third edition of Border Games, Peter Andreas charts the rise and transformation in policing the flow of drugs and migrants across the US-Mexico border. Recent border crackdowns and wall-building campaigns, he argues, are not unprecedented. Rather, they are the outcome of an escalatory dynamic already in motion—but now played out on a far bigger stage, with higher stakes, and in new security and political contexts. Focusing on the power of symbolic politics and policy feedback effects, Andreas traces the logic behind such buildup. Border policing is an attractive political mechanism for handling the often unintended consequences of past policy choices, signaling a commitment to territorial integrity and projecting an image of territorial authority. Yet its negative aftermath is not only frequently glossed over; it also fuels further escalation. With new chapters on the border policies of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Border Games continues to help readers grasp how the busiest border in the world is also one of the most fortified, and why it plays such a complicated and contentious role in both domestic politics and US-Mexico relations.

The definitive investigation and exposé of how some of the nation's largest corporations created and fueled the opioid crisis—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters who first uncovered the dimensions of the deluge of pain pills that ravaged the country and the complicity of a near-omnipotent drug cartel. AMERICAN CARTEL is an unflinching and deeply documented dive into the culpability of the drug companies behind the staggering death toll of the opioid epidemic. It follows a small band of DEA agents led by Joseph Rannazzisi, a tough-talking New Yorker who had spent a storied thirty years bringing down bad guys; along with a band of lawyers, including West Virginia native Paul Farrell Jr., who fought to hold the drug industry to account in the face of the worst man-made drug epidemic in American history. It is the story of underdogs prevailing over corporate greed and political cowardice, persevering in the face of predicted failure, and how they found some semblance of justice for the families of the dead during the most complex civil litigation ever seen.The investigators and lawyers discovered hundreds of thousands of confidential corporate emails and memos during courtroom combat with legions of white-shoe law firms defending the opioid industry. One breathtaking disclosure after another—from emails that mocked addicts to invoices chronicling the rise of pill mills—showed the indifference of big business to the epidemic's toll. The narrative approach echoes such work as A Civil Action and The Insider, moving dramatically between corporate boardrooms, courthouses, lobbying firms, DEA field offices, and Capitol Hill while capturing the human toll of the epidemic on America's streets.AMERICAN CARTEL is the story of those who were on the front lines of the fight to stop the human carnage. Along the way, they suffer a string of defeats, some of their careers destroyed by the very same government officials who swore to uphold the law before they begin to prevail over some of the most powerful corporate and political influences in the nation.

For readers of Dopesick and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a celebrated cannabis attorney's personal look at the War on Drugs and what comes next for the drug legalization movementGetting high is something most of us do, and in many cases do safely--yet drugs remain a singular public enemy. In a ranging blend of memoir, pop culture, policy critique, and social analysis, LA-based criminal defense attorney Allison Margolin explores why--and what we can do about it.Informed by Margolin's experiences as a drug user, advocate, and the daughter of California's most renowned (and infamous) cannabis attorney, Just Dope offers a look at where our current drug policy fails. It exposes the true history of drug prohibition in the United States, sharing why it started, how it evolved, and where it stands now. And it looks unflinchingly at the false dichotomy between “good” drugs and “bad” drugs and Margolin's experience with programs like D.A.R.E that misguidedly ask you to “Just Say No.”For readers of All Day is a Long Time and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Just Dope is an experiential tour-de-force of personal essay and whip-smart policy critique—and a vital call to knowledge and action.

This engaging and thoroughly updated text provides a cross-national perspective on the use and regulation of both legal and illegal drugs. It examines and critiques drug policies in the United States and abroad in terms of their scope, goals, and effectiveness. Authors Clayton J. Mosher and Scott Akins also discuss the physiological, psychological, and behavioral effects of legal and illicit drugs; the patterns and correlates of use; theories of the causes of drug use; and the policies that govern that usage. Features and Benefits Thoroughly reviews use of and regulation policies of both illegal and legal drugs, including the use of energy drinks and muscle enhancers like steroids and human growth hormones. Very up to date statistics and discussions of emerging trends and policies. Provides more coverage of drug policy issues than comparable books with particular attention to contrasting policies in countries around the world. Coverage of drug'epidemics'for new legal and illegal drugs not found in other books on drugs.

The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins.Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León

The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins.Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León

This book examines the U.S. war on drugs at home and abroad. It provides a brief history of the war on drugs. In addition, it analyzes drug trafficking and organized crime in Colombia and Mexico, and the role of the United States government in counternarcotics policies. This work also examines the opioid epidemic, addiction, and alternative policies.

Since President Nixon coined the phrase, the'War on Drugs'has presented an important change in how people view and discuss criminal justice practices and drug laws. The term evokes images of militarization, punishment, and violence, as well as combat and the potential for victory. It is no surprise then that questions such as whether the'War on Drugs'has'failed'or'can be won'have animated mass media and public debate for the past 40 years.Through analysis of 30 years of newspaper content, Debating the Drug War examines the social and cultural contours of this heated debate and explores how proponents and critics of the controversial social issues of drug policy and incarceration frame their arguments in mass media. Additionally, it looks at the contemporary public debate on the'War on Drugs'through an analysis of readers'comments drawn from the comments sections of online news articles.Through a discussion of the findings and their implications, the book illuminates the ways in which ideas about race, politics, society, and crime, and forms of evidence and statistics such as rates of arrest and incarceration or the financial costs of drug policies and incarceration are advanced, interpreted, and contested. Further, the book will bring to light how people form a sense of their racial selves in debates over policy issues tied to racial inequality such as the'War on Drugs'through narratives that connect racial categories to concepts such as innocence, criminality, free will, and fairness. Debating the Drug War offers readers a variety of concepts and theoretical perspectives that they can use to make sense of these vital issues in contemporary society.

Gabriel Ferreyra presents a comprehensive analysis of drug trafficking in Mexico and the United States by examining the roots, development, consolidation, and cultural ramifications of this phenomenon in the past century as well as its negative consequences in contemporary Mexico. Ferreyra discusses the most devastating effects correlated to drug trafficking such as high murder rates, gruesome violence, disappearances, and mass graves to emphasize how Mexican society bears the brunt of this phenomenon while the United States insists on the futility of drug prohibition. Unlike other publications, this book provides an interdisciplinary social science approach where drug trafficking is conceptualized as a multifaceted social, political, economic, and cultural problem, rather than just a criminal justice issue. Drug Trafficking in Mexico and the United States also revisits the war on drugs and provides an argument how drug control is the primary force behind drug trafficking. In that respect, there is an analysis on how the DEA has reinforced the war on drugs model and why it became a reactionary agency that opposes any comprehensive alternative to the American drug problem besides drug control. The author concludes with recommendations to implement forward-thinking measures such as decriminalization, reclassification, and legalization of drugs to effectively address the illicit drug trade.

How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project.Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social, and cultural forces--by set (the mindset of the user) and setting (the environments in which the experience takes place).

Die Debatte um Drogenkonsum und dessen Bekämpfung hat Konjunktur. Timo Bonengel zeichnet die Geschichte der Drogenpolitik in den USA nach, die sich in den 1980er Jahren von wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Strategien in eine konservative, auf Abschreckung und Bestrafung setzende Sozialpolitik verwandelte. Das Buch zeigt, dass der »War on Drugs« auch mithilfe von wissenschaftlichen Expert•innen geführt wurde und dennoch ethnische Minderheiten und arme Menschen diskriminierte. Damit problematisiert die Studie Forderungen nach einer wissenschaftsbasierten und deshalb angeblich gerechten Drogenpolitik.

A sweeping and highly readable work on the evolution of America's domestic and global drug war How can the United States chart a path forward in the war on drugs? In Drugs and Thugs, Russell Crandall uncovers the full history of this war that has lasted more than a century. As a scholar and a high-level national security advisor to both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, he provides an essential view of the economic, political, and human impacts of U.S. drug policies. Backed by extensive research, lucid and unbiased analysis of policy, and his own personal experiences, Crandall takes readers from Afghanistan to Colombia, to Peru and Mexico, to Miami International Airport and the border crossing between El Paso and Juarez to trace the complex social networks that make up the drug trade and drug consumption. Through historically driven stories, Crandall reveals how the war on drugs has evolved to address mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, the legalization and medical use of marijuana, and America's shifting foreign policy.

How is it that, in doing our very best to achieve one thing, we can end up achieving just the opposite? There exists an unseen force with an unassuming name that conceals all manner of terrors. It is ‘Unintended Consequences', and it takes our efforts to do the good and right thing, turns them to ashes and blows them back in our faces. Whether it be governments fighting a “War on Terror” only to bring their economies crashing about their ears, ecologists attempting to stamp out pests but making things ten times worse in the process, or giving people lots of choice only for them to make worse decisions, it is all too easy to start out with the best of intentions, only to end up doing more harm than good. In Unintended Consequences, Clive Wills discusses national disasters, Prohibition and the War on Drugs, frustrated efforts to improve health and safety, and touches on issues of everyday life such as how to improve relationships and bring up children. As HL Mencken reflected, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong”. This book examines the many ways in which those apparently simple solutions can turn around and bite us, and more importantly, just what we can do about it.

The primary data driver behind US drug policy is the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. This insider history traces the evolution of the survey and how the survey has interacted with the political and social climate of the country, from its origins during the Vietnam War to its role in the war on drugs. The book includes first-hand accounts that explain how the data was used and misused by political leaders, why changes were made in the survey design, and what challenges researchers faced in communicating statistical principles to policymakers and leaders. It also makes recommendations for managing survey data collection and reporting in the context of political pressures and technological advances. Survey research students and practitioners will learn practical lessons about questionnaire design, mode effects, sampling, nonresponse, weighting, editing, imputation, statistical significance, and confidentiality. The book also includes common-language explanations of key terms and processes to help data users understand the point of view of survey statisticians.

This book addresses the challenge of international narcotics control by applying'the Manwaring paradigm.'The paradigm is the basis for an improved strategy and theory of engagement for weak governments of the developing world, built around the concept of the'gray area phenomenon.'

Winner of the Donald W. Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical SociologyMedical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates dilemmas for patients who participate in state programs. The Medicalization of Marijuana takes the first comprehensive look at how patients negotiate incomplete medicalization and what their experiences reveal about our relationship with this controversial plant as it is incorporated into biomedicine. Is cannabis used similarly to other medicines? Drawing on interviews with midlife patients in Colorado, a state at the forefront of medical cannabis implementation, this book explores the practical decisions individuals confront about medical use, including whether cannabis will work for them; the risks of registering in a state program; and how to handle questions of supply, dosage, and routines of use.Individual stories capture how patients redefine and reclaim cannabis use as legitimate—individually and collectively—and grapple with an inherently political identity. These experiences help illustrate how stigma, prejudice, and social change operate. By positioning cannabis use within sociological models of medical behavior, Newhart and Dolphin provide a wide-reaching, theoretically informed analysis of the issue that expands established concepts and provides new insight on medical cannabis and how state programs work.

Controlling illegal trafficking in narcotics is a complex challenge. Dilemmas for policymakers abound. Despite new measures adopted by the international community that have led to tactical victories, the flow of illicit drugs into the United States continues largely unabated, and worldwide production of opium, marijuana, and coca continues to grow dramatically. In this timely work, specialists from government, academia, and the private sector debate recent U.S. foreign drug policy—its origins, its elements, its implementation, and its prospects for success. Serious conflicts between U.S. international narcotics policy and U.S. foreign policy contribute to the dilemmas inherent in curbing global drug trafficking: Interdicting drugs interrupts the free flow of goods, people, and wealth across international borders. International political and economic instabilities, especially political breakups and ethnic strife in former police states, complicate U.S. foreign drug policy. Because U.S. antidrug goals can bring political disruption and economic loss to countries where narcotics production is economically and socially entrenched, the United States must cooperate with an international antinarcotics coalition of producer, transit, and consumer nations, operating within the context of their perspectives and priorities while trying to achieve competing U.S. foreign policy goals.

Since the mid-1980s subsequent US governments have promoted a highly militarized and prohibitionist drug control approach in Latin America. Despite this strategy the region has seen increasing levels of homicide, displacement and violence. Why did the militarization of U.S. drug war policies in Latin America begin and why has it continued despite its inability to achieve the stated targets? Are such policies simply intended to impose U.S. power or have elites in Latin America internalized this agenda as their own? Why did resistance to this approach emerge in the late-2000s and does this represent a challenge to the prohibitionist agenda? In this book William Avilés argues that if we are to understand and explain the militarization of the drug war in Latin America a ‘transnational grand strategy', developed and implemented by networks of elites and state managers operating in a neoliberal, globalized social structure of accumulation, must be considered and examined.

Red Crew is a first-hand account of U.S. Coast Guard anti-smuggling operations during the early years of the nation's maritime war on drugs. Jim Howe describes his experience as the executive officer of a specialized drug-hunting crew that sailed in then-state-of-the-art “surface effect ships,” a small flotilla of high-speed vessels pressed into the drug war on short notice. In the early 1980s, South Florida and the Caribbean were awash in illicit drugs, with hundreds of smuggling organizations bringing huge loads of marijuana, and later cocaine, into the United States. To fight this epidemic, the Reagan administration led a massive effort to disrupt shore-side gangs while bolstering interdiction activity at sea. To increase the number of days at sea for each surface effect ship, a “multi-crewing” concept was employed, with four teams of sixteen sailors—the Red, Blue, Green, and Gold Crews—rotating among three hulls. Through its first-person narrative, Red Crew offers a rare glimpse into the day-to-day pressures, challenges, failures, and successes of Coast Guard cuttermen as they carried out complex and dangerous missions. Red Crew provides a unique historical view of the early days in the Coast Guard's war on drugs, and is the only book-length history of the diminutive, one-of-a-kind surface effect ship fleet.

Cocaine has had a long and prominent position in the history of American substance abuse. As far back as the late 1800s cocaine was commonly found hi patent medicines, elixirs, and, astonishingly, in the earliest versions of Coca-Cola. Eventually, the potency of cocaine was recognized and its purveyors came under gradual regulation. Events hi the early 1900s kept cocaine use down until World War II, but the extensive drug use of the 1960s once again sparked a national temperance movement. Created in 1989, the Office of National Drug Control Policy maintains responsibility for coordinating and monitoring the nation's countemarcotics policy. But responsibility for coordination and monitoring is not the same thing as control.In Snow Job? Kevin Jack Riley examines source country control policies—policies intended to control the production and export of cocaine from Latin America—and their limitations. Part I draws together drug use, drug production, and drug control policies hi an analytic framework. It goes on to examine the recent history of U.S. drug control policies, source country control policies, the ways hi which cocaine prices affect cocaine use, how cocaine is made, and the vulnerable points in its production. Part II examines the economic effects that production and controls exert on the sources of cocaine—Bolivia and Peru—and probes the Colombian drug lord connection. Part III prescribes an appropriate path for source country cocaine policies and examines their implications for two other widely smuggled drugs, heroin and marijuana.Riley disagrees with analysts who believe that source country control policies can lead to permanent victory hi the war against cocaine, because of the potentially high costs associated with implementing source country control policies on a large scale. He suggests a better strategy would be one that recognizes the severe limits facing interdiction, eradication, and other source country policies, and instead focuses on directing source country resources where they will be most useful. This necessitates defining a regional strategy that elevates political stability and institution building, and demotes traditional countemarcotics objectives. Snow Job? offers original thinking and practical approaches to a multidimensional world problem and will be of interest to policymakers, political scientists, sociologists, and law enforcement officials.

This collection examines the ambiguous relationship be-tween the politically mute, average drug user and the small number, socially distant from the common user, who started the work of undermining official definitions of drug use. The drug users'identification with the issues of power, freedom, oppression, and libertarianism, triggered by the experience of police and penal regulations, is discussed, as is the influence of the growth in the collective competence of users and the changes in the using population on the shifting image of drugs.

A HARROWING JOURNEY INSIDE THE HIDDEN WORLD OF DRUG CARTELS BY ONE OF THE TOP CRIMINAL INFORMANTS IN U.S. LAW ENFORCEMENT HISTORY. The men he put behind bars know him as Roman Caribe or one of the dozens of other aliases he has used undercover. His handlers in the DEA, ICE, and FBI know him as Confidential Source Ninety-Six, or C.S. 96, named for the year he confronted the sins of his life atop a massive drug distribution ring and flipped, becoming law enforcement's secret weapon. In Confidential Source Ninety-Six, Caribe tells the extraordinary story of his transformation into America's most successful informant in terms of total narcotics seized--from the years of trafficking cocaine and marijuana across the U.S. for a terrifying drug lord, eventually becoming that man's number two, to his decision to defect and trade sides. In his first mission, Caribe set his sights on his onetime boss's brutal operation. In his next, he broke all protocol and made a daring foray into the notorious Fuentes Cartel, where he took down a family that was smuggling tons of drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. As Caribe launched his career as a confidential source, finding his faith and seeking to finally do right by his stoic wife, Inez, and his four children, his marriage became stressed in new ways, the risks to his family unimaginable if he made a single mistake on the job. He found himself looking over his shoulder every day, knowing that with each drug ring or kingpin he destroyed, he made another dangerous enemy. For as long as he continued the high stakes work, he would survive on the cunning of his tradecraft and his ability to improvise in the most terrifying circumstances. Unfolding in Southern California mansions, makeshift DEA trailers deep in the redwood forest, drug fronts in Spanish Harlem, fast-food parking lots where kilograms of cocaine and heroin change hands, and around the dinner table where Caribe began mentoring at-risk youth to help them avoid the mistakes he made, Confidential Source Ninety-Six is the epic saga of one man's quest to redeem himself and a thrilling look at the law enforcement battle that rages in the shadows of our nation.

The term “Mexican Drug War” misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair.But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer—with increasingly deadly consequences.Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries.Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.

Carmen Boullosa y Mike Wallace exploran el fenómeno del narcotráfico en México y Estados Unidos durante los últimos cien años, sus consecuencias y las posibles soluciones. Un libro fue escrito para confrontar la convicción generalizada de que los horrores de la última década son un producto mexicano. Una creencia que ha alentado posturas como la de Donald Trump. La novelista mexicana Carmen Boullosa y el historiador Mike Wallace demuestran al lector que el narcotráfico en nuestro país es algo reciente y exclusivamente nuestro es un error fatal de perspectiva. El fenómeno del narcotráfico en México y Estados Unidos es un fenómeno histórico complejo. Como advierten Carmen Boullosa y Mike Wallace, la causa principal de la narcoviolencia fue la decisión delgobierno estadounidense, tomada a principios del siglo XX, de prohibir el consumo de drogas a sus ciudadanos. Cuando éstos recurrieron al mercado negro -en el que los mexicanos han jugado un papel decisivo- Estados Unidos no tuvo la voluntad, o la manera, de detener la importación, y orilló al gobierno de México a servirle de socio menor en su proyecto prohibicionista, con resultados desastrosos. El precio que han pagado los estadounidenses por la prohibición ha sido la encarcelación masiva de ciudadanos, sobre todo de afroamericanos. El que han pagado los mexicanos ha sido mucho mayor: el enorme número de muertos y desaparecidos, el crimen y la corrupción. Si la guerracontra las drogas fue una creación conjunta, la solución sólo puede ser bilateral. La experiencia apunta a la legalización, a tratar a las adicciones como un asunto de salud pública y no como un crimen.

This book reveals the disturbing truth about how the escalation of the War on Drugs over the past 30 years has eroded the human and property rights of Americans—while doing little to stop drug trafficking or use.Unique in its perspective, this eye-opening book looks at the drug war as a rights issue and concludes that Americans'civil liberties are clearly being violated. The volume proceeds from two premises: that over the past 30 years, America's War on Drugs has done more harm than good; and that if the United States is going to reform the criminal justice system, the public must understand that this'war'is empowered by the profits it provides to law enforcement and other groups. A central factor causing the upsurge in the drug war, the author explains, is the fact that laws were passed in the 1980s that allowed law enforcement to profit from seizing property based on scanty evidence and without criminal charges. His meticulous research has revealed that this'policing for profit'is responsible for a variety of assaults on civil liberties, including mass incarceration, SWAT teams, and random drug sweeps. A second factor that infects every aspect of the War on Drugs is racism—the widespread stereotyping of drug traffickers as African Americans and Latinos. These issues and more are explored in this book that lays bare what the media largely ignores.

Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts, and Control, Eighth Edition, focuses on the many critical areas of America's drug problem, providing a foundation for rational decision-making within this complex and multidisciplinary field. Lyman offers a comprehensive big-picture examination of the US drug problem, dealing with drugs, abusers, drug enforcement, and public policy. Organized in three sections: Understanding the Problem, Gangs and Drugs, and Fighting Back, topics covered include the business of drugs and the role of organized crime in the drug trade, drug legalization and decriminalization, legal and law enforcement strategies, an analysis of the socialization process of drug use and abuse, and a historical discussion of drug abuse that puts the contemporary drug problem into perspective.Suitable for upper-level undergraduates in Criminal Justice, Criminology, and related programs, Drugs in Society, Eighth Edition, uses logical organization and strong pedagogy (case studies, focused text boxes with related information, critical thinking tasks) to support learning objectives.

This work demonstrates the value of a multi-method approach to public policy analysis, arguing that descriptive historical studies, quantitative historical studies and cross-sectional quantitative studies are essentially compatible.

How the War on Drugs is maintained through racism,authority and public opinion. From the hit television series Breaking Bad, to daily news reports, anti-drug advertising campaigns and highly publicized world-wide hunts for “narcoterrorists” such as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the drug, methamphetamine occupies a unique and important space in the public's imagination. In Meth Wars, Travis Linnemann situates the'meth epidemic'within the broader culture and politics of drug control and mass incarceration.Linnemann draws together a range of examples and critical interdisciplinary scholarship to show how methamphetamine, and the drug war more generally, are part of a larger governing strategy that animates the politics of fear and insecurity and links seemingly unrelated concerns such as environmental dangers, the politics of immigration and national security, policing tactics, and terrorism. The author's unique analysis presents a compelling case for how the supposed “meth epidemic” allows politicians, small town police and government counter-narcotics agents to engage in a singular policing project in service to the broader economic and geostrategic interests of the United States.

It is commonly known that the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the international centers of cocaine production. But until now, there has been no comprehensive view of this billion dollar industry. Using never-before unearthed information culled from their extensive field research, Patrick Clawson and Rensselaer Lee reveal the configuration of the drug industry, from the original cultivation of coca in the fields of South America to the sale of cocaine on the streets of the United States. The authors analyze the economic and political impact of the drug business on the Andean nations, including such problems as violence and the undermining of legitimate business. Through the ground-breaking work of Clawson and Lee, The Andean Cocaine Industry illuminates one of the most pervasive problems facing the world today.

Operation Intercept: The Multiple Consequences of Public Policy provides a critical sociological analysis of the contemporary anti-marijuana policies. The title first covers the policy and the research problem, and then proceeds to tackling the multiple consequences of operation intercept. Next, the selection talks about the finding in the study of public policy and drug abuse problem. The text also provides an account of operation intercept. The book will be of great interest to political scientists, sociologists, behavioral scientists and legislators.

Domestic drug enforcement takes many forms, from the rural patrol officer who happens upon a small-scale mobile “shake and bake” methamphetamine lab during a routine traffic stop, to the city narcotics detective who initiates a low-level buy-bust operation that nets a few hits of crack cocaine on the street corner, to the local, state, and federal agents working in multiagency task forces that coordinate a sting operation that nets thousands of kilos of near-pure cocaine being transported by tractor-trailer. Regardless of the form, there is a high probability that these authorities have exploited access to known offenders and exerted pressure on those individuals to gather inside information on illicit drug sales. These confidential informants provide intelligence on the inner workings of drug operations in exchange for leniency or remuneration, providing a relatively cheap source of intelligence that fuels much of the ongoing war on drugs. In other instances, law enforcement authorities will reach out to members of the criminal underworld who are willing to provide valuable intelligence in exchange for money. Despite the central role of informants in contemporary police operations, little is known about the shadowy relationships among law enforcement, snitches, and offenders. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the narcotics, homicide, and street-level vice operations in two major metropolitan police departments, Speaking Truth to Power takes readers to the front lines of the war on drugs to unravel this complex web of information exchange.

This book addresses the three central issues that continue to dominate the U.S.-Mexico relationship today: drugs, immigration, and security. Nowhere is this more palpable than at the 2,000-mile border shared by the two countries.The U.S.-Mexico border remains a hot topic in the news—and a contentious one. This second edition of a popular work brings readers up to date on what is really going on at the U.S.-Mexico border and why. The book offers a detailed, history-based examination of the evolution of current conditions on the border, arguing that they exist due to a steady growth in the security concerns of the United States over almost two centuries. The author shows how the border has gone through four historical stages that, ultimately, have crippled the region, sacrificing its ability to produce prosperity in exchange for greater security. Combining depth and breadth, the book covers the economic relationship between Mexico and the United States, the deployment of technology, the bureaucratic interests that control the border landscape, the democratic deficit, and a detrimental lack of policy coordination. Issues such as drug trafficking and homeland security are considered as well. Demonstrating the internal and contradictory logic of American policy toward the border, the author argues that current conditions could lead to a return of authoritarianism in Mexico and a concurrent rise in anti-American sentiment.

Dentists have been inundated by patients with an array of complicated medical conditions and pain/sedation management issues. This is in addition to a variety of legal regulations dentists must follow regarding the storage and recordkeeping of controlled substances. Avoid unknowingly putting your practice at risk by becoming victim to a scam or violating a recordkeeping requirement with The ADA Practical Guide to Substance Use Disorders and Safe Prescribing. This Practical Guide is ideal for dentists and staff as they navigate: • Detecting and deterring substance use disorders (SUD) and drug diversion in the dental office (drug-seeking patients) • Prescribing complexities • Treating patients with SUD and complex analgesic and sedation (pain/sedation management) needs and the best use of sedation anxiety medication • Interviewing and counselling options for SUD • Federal drug regulations Commonly used illicit, prescription, and over-the-counter drugs, as well as alcohol and tobacco, are also covered. Special features include: • Clinical tools proven to aid in the identification, interviewing, intervention, referral and treatment of SUD • Basic elements of SUD, acute pain/sedation management, and drug diversion • Summary of evidence-based literature that supports what, when and how to prescribe controlled substances to patients with SUD • Discussion of key federal controlled substance regulations that frequently impact dental practitioners • Checklists to help prevent drug diversion in dental practices • Chapter on impaired dental professionals • Case studies that examine safe prescribing and due diligence

An authoritative, persuasive, and riveting call for the legalization and responsible use of medical marijuana, The Cannabis Manifesto is a book whose time has comeThe Cannabis Manifesto is both a call to action and a radical vision of humans'relationship with this healing but controversial plant. Steve DeAngelo, the founder of Harborside Health Center, the world's largest medical-cannabis dispensary, presents a compelling case for cannabis as a wellness catalyst that must be legalized. His view that there is no such thing as recreational cannabis use challenges readers to rethink everything they thought they knew about marijuana. The Cannabis Manifesto answers essential questions about the plant, using extensive research to fuel a thoughtful discussion about cannabis science and law, as well as its biological, mental, and spiritual effects on human beings. With a cultural critic's eye peering through the lens of social justice, DeAngelo explains how cannabis prohibition has warped our most precious institutions—from the family, to the workplace, to the doctor's office and the courtroom. In calling for a realistic national policy on a substance that has been used by half of all Americans, this essential primer will forever change the way the world thinks about cannabis, its benefits, and the laws governing its use.

When tough-on-crime laws passed 30 years ago during an era of drug-fueled violence, they were supported across the political spectrum. The subsequent “war on drugs” sent non-violent offenders to prison for decades and, in some cases, life. As a result, the nation's prison and jail population today is 2.3 million, more than quadruple the number that were incarcerated in 1980. One in 100 adults is behind bars in America. As many as 100 million American adults now have criminal records, and a disproportionate number of those are men of color. Washington Post reporters, in a series of revealing and wrenching stories throughout 2015, unlocked the prison gates and allowed readers to experience the human devastation wrought by sentencing policies now under scrutiny.

The US-led war on drugs has failed: drugs remain purer, cheaper and more readily available than ever. Extreme levels of violence have also grown as drug traffickers and organized criminals compete for control of territory. This book points towards a number of crucial challenges, policy solutions and alternatives to the current drug strategies.

Ce livre stimulant et extrêmement bien documenté explore les aspects secrets de la politique étrangère américaine. Analyste politique de premier plan, Peter Dale Scott rassemble des preuves accablantes afin de lever le voile sur la violence autorisée par l'Etat, illégale bien que largement répandue, qui règne dans le monde de la politique et dans celui des affaires. L'auteur s'intéresse particulièrement à ce phénomène dans le cadre de l'implication à long terme des Etats-Unis dans le trafic de drogue mondial. Dès les années 1950 en Thaïlande, les Américains se sont habitués à voir la CIA nouer des alliances avec les trafiquants de drogues (et leurs banquiers) afin d'installer et de soutenir des gouvernements de droite. Le schéma s'est répété ensuite dans de nombreux pays (Laos, Vietnam, Italie, Mexique, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombie, Pérou, Chili, Panama, Honduras, Turquie, Pakistan et à présent en Afghanistan, pour ne nommer que ceux évoqués dans le livre). Scott démontre que la relation des services de renseignements américains et de leurs agents avec le trafic de drogue mondial et d'autres réseaux de criminels internationaux, demande une étude approfondie au sein du débat sur la présence américaine en Afghanistan. A ce jour, le gouvernement américain et ses politiques ont plutôt contribué à renforcer le trafic de drogue qu'à le restreindre. La soi-disant'Guerre contre la terreur', et en particulier la guerre en Afghanistan, constituent seulement un nouveau chapitre de cette dérangeante histoire.

Este libro explora la retórica y la práctica de las políticas públicas adelantadas por el Departamento de Estado, el Pentágono, el Congreso y el Comando Sur de los Estados Unidos, y argumenta que el paradigma de'cero tolerancia'para las drogas ilegales proveía la arquitectura ideológica para la subsiguiente militarización de la política antinarcóticos. Los funcionarios de EEUU hicieron caso omiso de la complicidad del Estado colombiano con la brutalidad paramilitar, considerando los atropellos de estas fuerzas como evidencia de un Estado ausente y la expresión de una clase media frustrada.

In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers'utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials'zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.

This work focuses on the many critical areas of America's drug problem, providing a foundation for rational decision making within this complex and multidisciplinary field. Broken up into three sections, Understanding the Problem, Gangs and Drugs, and Fighting Back, topics covered include the business of drugs and the role of organized crime in the drug trade, drug legalization and decriminalization, legal and law enforcement strategies, an analysis of the socialization process of drug use and abuse, and a historical discussion of drug abuse that puts the contemporary drug problem into perspective.

First published in 2007, Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics critically analyzed claims made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the White House agency of accountability in the nation's drug war since 1989, as found in the six editions of the annual National Drug Control Strategy between 2000 and 2005. In this revised and updated second edition of their critically acclaimed work, Matthew B. Robinson and Renee G. Scherlen examine seven more recent editions (2006–2012) to once again determine if ONDCP accurately and honestly presents information or intentionally distorts evidence to justify continuing the drug war. They uncover the many ways in which ONDCP manipulates statistics and visually presents that information to the public. Their analysis demonstrates a drug war that consistently fails to reduce drug use, drug fatalities, or illnesses associated with drug use; fails to provide treatment for drug-dependent users; and drives up the prices of drugs. They conclude with policy recommendations for reforming ONDCP's use of statistics, as well as how the nation fights the war on drugs.