The War on Drugs : : A History / / ed. by David Farber.

• MitwirkendeR: Bradford, James,; Carey, Elaine,; Dufton, Emily,; Dyck, Erika,; Farber, David,; Frydl, Kathleen,; Herzberg, David,; Pihos, Peter C.,; Polson, Michael,; Richert, Lucas,; Teague, Aileen,; Turner, Alexis,
• HerausgeberIn: Farber, David,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 4 b/w illustrations

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I: Background -- 1. The Advent of the War on Drugs -- Part II: Supply and Demand -- 2. Drug Dealers -- 3. The Mexico–Chicago Heroin Connection -- 4. Cultivating Cannabis, Excepting Cannabis -- Part III: The Domestic Front -- 5. The Local War on Drugs -- 6. Cannabis Culture Wars -- 7. Psychedelic Wars: LSD as Mental Medicine in a Battle for Hearts and Minds -- Part IV: The International Front -- 8. The War on Drugs in Mexico -- 9. The War on Drugs in Afghanistan -- Part V: The Alternative to War -- 10. Between the Free Market and the Drug War -- 11. The Pharma Cartel -- Acknowledgments -- About the Editor -- About the Contributors -- Index