Just Say Yes: Winning the U.S. War on Drugs

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan K. Bickford
Keyword(s):  
War On Drugs ◽  
The U.S

26. Transnational Crime

2018 ◽  
pp. 393-409
Author(s):  
Harold Trinkunas
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Crime ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Transnational Crime ◽  
Initial State ◽  
Government Response ◽  
International Trends ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the threats posed by transnational crime to national security. Globalization and other international trends may have the unintended consequence of fostering the development of transnational crime. Initial state and international responses to transnational crime in the 1980s were driven in large part by the U.S. war on drugs. After providing an overview of relevant definitions and key concepts, particularly with respect to international crime and organized crime, the chapter considers both the reasons for and the nature of the increase in transnational crime since the end of the Cold War. It then looks at debates over the strength and nature of the ‘nexus’ between transnational crime and terrorism. It concludes by analysing how the government response to transnational crime has evolved over time, focusing on increased coordination and securitization between nations.

scholarly journals Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.–Colombia War on Drugs

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Marie Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Forest Ecology ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Small Farmers ◽  
Alternative Development ◽  
Regenerative Capacity ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Development Interventions ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Tropical Forest Ecology ◽  
The U.S

How is life in a criminalized ecology in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of southwestern Colombia? In what way does antinarcotics policy that aims to eradicate la mata que mata (the plant that kills) pursue peace through poison? Relatedly, how do people keep on cultivating a garden, caring for forest, or growing food when at any moment a crop-duster plane may pass overhead, indiscriminately spraying herbicides over entire landscapes? Since 2000, the U.S.–Colombian War on Drugs has relied on the militarized aerial fumigation of coca plants, coupled with alternative development interventions that aim to forcibly eradicate illicit livelihoods. Through ethnographic engagement with small farmers in the frontier department of Putumayo, the gateway to the country’s Amazon and a region that has been the focus of counternarcotic operations, this article explores the different possibilities and foreclosures for life and death that emerge in a tropical forest ecology under military duress. By following farmers, their material practices, and their life philosophies, I trace the ways in which human-soil relations come to potentiate forms of resistance to the violence and criminalization produced by militarized, growth-oriented development. Rather than productivity—one of the central elements of modern capitalist growth—the regenerative capacity of these ecologies relies on organic decay, impermanence, decomposition, and even fragility that complicates modernist bifurcations of living and dying, allowing, I argue, for ecological imaginaries and life processes that do not rely on productivity or growth to strive into existence.

scholarly journals Hegemony and Humanitarian Norms: The U.S. Legitimation of Toxic Violence

2013 ◽  
pp. 82-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonds
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The U.S

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating work in order to maintain domestic and international consent. Based on case study analysis of archival and secondary sources, this article identifies three main techniques U.S. officials use to legitimate contested forms of violence. These techniques are defensive categorization, humanitizing discourse, and surrogacy.

Challenging the U.S.-Led War on Drugs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastián Antonino Cutrona
Keyword(s):  
War On Drugs ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Land of the Free: Prison Reform Following the War on Drugs

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Megan Tingley
Keyword(s):  
Prison Population ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
World Population ◽  
Federal Prison ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing ◽  
The U.S

ince its beginnings in 1971, the war on drugs has been largely unsuccessful in reducing drug use. Instead, it has had many unintended consequences, one of which is a huge increase in the federal prison population over the past 40 years. Despite making up only five percent of the world population, the U.S. is home to 25 percent of its prisoners. Since the 1970s, the prison population in the U.S. has skyrocketed due to the implementation of War on Drugs policies. The main reason for the failure of the War on Drugs can be attributed in part to mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Implemented as a part of the Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986, these one-size-fits-all policies require a certain punishment based on the amount and type of drug in possession without allowing for flexibility based on context. 

The U.S. war on drugs: wasteful and counterproductive

2004 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-161
Author(s):  
Bertil Lintner
Keyword(s):  
War On Drugs ◽  
The U.S

Violence, Governance, and Economic Development at the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Case of Nuevo Laredo and Its Lessons

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freddy Mariñez Navarro ◽  
Leonardo Vivas
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Illegal Drug ◽  
Border City ◽  
Drug Trafficking Organizations ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Political Economy Analysis ◽  
Cartel Violence ◽  
The U.S

The paper seeks to make sense of the impacts and responses to the current war on drugs in Nuevo Laredo. In it, the impacts of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) in Nuevo Laredo as well as prospects for recovery are examined from three perspectives: a political economy analysis of competitiveness in a border city; the specifics of illegal drug business in Mexico as compared to Colombia using Michael Porter's “Competitiveness Diamond”; and the strategies of local government to regain governance. The results are summarized in five theses about how Nuevo Laredo's international trade culture affects how they cope with cartel violence.

Why the U.S. Government is Not Contributing to the Resolution of the Nation's Drug Problem

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Chambliss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Drug Problem ◽  
Surgeon General ◽  
The U.S

When the U.S. Surgeon General suggested looking at the experience of countries that have officially or de facto decriminalized drugs, the administration's reaction was unequivocal: under no circumstances would the decriminalization of drugs be considered. This reaction prevails despite the admission by almost everyone that the so-called “war on drugs” is not merely a failure but a disaster. Had the Surgeon General's suggestion been followed the results would show that decriminalization—judging from the experience of other nations and states within the United States that have decriminalized marijuana—would have few negative consequences and many positive ones, not the least of which would be a lessening of crimes associated with the prohibition of drugs. In the United States the effect might also be to reduce the hidden racist war that takes place nightly in the ghettoes of the nation's underclass.

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