Download or read book The War on Drugs written by David Farber and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Smoke and Mirrors written by Dan Baum and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 1996 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that despite increasing levels of government action, illicit drugs are more readily available than ever, and analyzes the failure of our drug policy
Download or read book The U S War on Drugs at Home and Abroad written by Jonathan D. Rosen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line written by Kojo Koram and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years of the War on Drugs has led to millions of deaths, displacements, and incarcerations. Disproportionately enacted on oppressed races, international drug prohibition has reinforced the color line across the globe. This collection reveals the racist impact of the war on drugs across multiple continents and in numerous situations, from racialized drug policing at festivals in the United Kingdom to the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico, and from the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel to the management of black bodies in Brazil. Pushing forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and calling for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, this collection proves that the problem of drugs and race is an international, and intentional, disaster.
Download or read book Ending the War on Drugs written by and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last 50 years, drug prohibition laws have put the market for illegal drugs into the hands of organised criminals. Now, it’s time to take control. Ending the failed war on drugs will reduce drug-related violence, tackle organised crime, end the needless criminalisation of millions, and will halt the drain on government funds and resources. In this book, global opinion-leaders on the frontline of the drug debate describe their experiences and perspectives on what needs to be done. Highlighting the pitfalls behind drug policy to-date and bringing to light new policies and approaches, which make a clear case for galvanizing governments to end the war on drugs – once and for all.
Download or read book Blowing Smoke written by Michael J. Reznicek and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blowing Smoke argues that we are losing the drug war because of our devotion to the disease model of substance abuse. That model has become the driving force for our two main strategies in the war: prohibition laws and drug rehab. The book traces the history and science behind each to show how they paradoxically enable drug use.
Download or read book Beyond the War on Drugs written by Steven Wisotsky and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 1990-03 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Chasing the Scream written by Johann Hari and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Killer High written by Peter Andreas and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: How drugs made war and war made drugs -- Drunk on the front -- Where there's smoke there's war -- Caffeinated conflict -- Opium, empire, and Geopolitics -- Speed warfare -- Cocaine wars -- Conclusion: The drugged battlefields of the 21st century .
Download or read book War and Drugs written by Dessa K. Bergen-Cico and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War and Drugs explores the relationship between military incursions and substance use and abuse throughout history. For centuries, drugs have been used to weaken enemies, stimulate troops to fight, and quell post-war trauma. They have also served as a source of funding for clandestine military and paramilitary activity. In addition to offering detailed geopolitical perspectives, this book explores the intergenerational trauma that follows military conflict and the rising tide of substance abuse among veterans, especially from the Vietnam and Iraq-Afghan eras. Addiction specialist Bergen-Cico raises important questions about the past and challenges us to consider new approaches in the future to this longest of US wars.
Download or read book Drug War Politics written by Eva Bertram and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-07-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An important and timely book. The authors capture the dynamics of drug debate with uncanny accuracy. Too often, treatment and prevention get the short end of the stick in Congress, and this book explains why. Drug War Politics makes a compelling case for bringing public health principles to bear on the drug epidemic, and is essential reading for serious students of the drug issue."—Senator Edward M. Kennedy "A thoughtful analysis of the most fundamental and troublesome social problem in America. It reaches behind rhetoric and starts making sense about how we can go about saving ourselves from two addictions: the terrible affliction of drugs and the easy talk that makes the rest of us feel good but does not deal with the problem."—Kurt Schmoke, Mayor, City of Baltimore "This well-informed book shows how political expediency and a punitive conventional wisdom have combined over the past decades to support a national drug policy that fills our prisons, depletes our budget, and destroys our poor. This is a wonderfully sane analysis of what has become a major form of national insanity."—Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York "We've needed a new way of thinking about the drug problem for a long time. Now we have it. Drug War Politics is one of the best efforts to reconceptualize a major aspect of crime, especially victimless crime, that I have seen since Morris and Hawkins' The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control of nearly 30 years ago."—Theodore J. Lowi, Cornell University "A compelling analysis of our failure. The provocative public health solutions it proposes to the drug-related crime, violence, and despair that ravage many of our inner cities show that we can give people a chance—a chance to fight addiction and build better lives."—Congressman John Lewis "We will never be able to arrest, prosecute, or jail our way out of the drug problem. To understand why, read this book. The evidence is overwhelming: we need a radical change in the mission and mandate of drug control."—Nicholas Pastore, Chief of Police, New Haven "This is the smart citizens' guide to the drug policy debate—to why we spend so much time and money on things that don't work, and to where we can look for guidance for things that do."—Barbara Geller, Director, Fighting Back, New Haven
Download or read book The War on Drugs in the Americas written by Christopher M. White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The War on Drugs in the Americas brings together the history of the War on Drugs in the US and Latin America to reveal how, since 1914, when the US first criminalized the non-medical use of narcotics, the trade and violence associated with drugs has developed throughout the hemisphere. This concise and accessible book provides an overview of the geographic, historical, economic, and social dimensions of the War on Drugs throughout the past century. Notable figures, popular drugs, competing theories, and significant historical events take center stage, as the story moves between macro analysis and micro details. Aside from infamous cartel leaders like Colombia’s Pablo Escobar and Mexico’s El Chapo Guzman, the reader learns about equally important but lesser-known Latin American and US traffickers. In addition to counter-narcotics giants, readers learn about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), DEA agents working to fight pharmaceutical companies and distributors, cutting-edge researchers and politicians that have pushed for and against the war. The War on Drugs in the Americas is essential reading for students studying Latin American History, International Studies, and Politics through its clear and objective narrative of the origins, impact, and debates behind the War on Drugs in the US and Latin America.
Download or read book Drug War Capitalism written by Dawn Paley and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though pillage, profit, and plunder have been a mainstay of war since pre-colonial times, there is little contemporary focus on the role of finance and economics in today's "Drug Wars"—despite the fact that they boost US banks and fill our prisons with poor people. They feed political campaigns, increase the arms trade, and function as long-term fixes to capitalism's woes, cracking open new territories to privatization and foreign direct investment. Combining on-the-ground reporting with extensive research, Dawn Paley moves beyond the usual horror stories, beyond journalistic rubbernecking and hand-wringing, to follow the thread of the Drug War story throughout the entire region of Latin America and all the way back to US boardrooms and political offices. This unprecedented book chronicles how terror is used against the population at large in cities and rural areas, generating panic and facilitating policy changes that benefit the international private sector, particularly extractive industries like petroleum and mining. This is what is really going on. This is drug war capitalism. Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from South America, Central America, and Mexico for over ten years. Her writing has been published in the Nation, the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, Ms. magazine, the Tyee, Georgia Straight, and NACLA, among others.
Download or read book Drugs and Thugs written by Russell Crandall and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Drugs Oil and War written by Peter Dale Scott and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it_a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics_the exercise of power by covert means_which tends to metastasize into deep politics_the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a 'soft politics' of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.
Download or read book The War on Drugs written by David Farber and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," leading scholars examine how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, deviant globalization, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy; they also point the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime"--
Download or read book Unequal under Law written by Doris Marie Provine and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race is clearly a factor in government efforts to control dangerous drugs, but the precise ways that race affects drug laws remain difficult to pinpoint. Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts. Doris Marie Provine’s engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design. Moreover, their racial origins have long been ignored by every branch of government. This dangerous denial threatens our constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law and mutes a much-needed national discussion about institutionalized racism—a discussion that Unequal under Law promises to initiate.
