Latin American cocaine trafficking organizations comprise an indigenous, globally competitive, multinational industry. Their business operations are deeply ingrained within the economic and political systems of countries throughout the region. While criminal enterprises operate in a more complex and uncertain setting than licit firms, their competitive success is determined in fundamentally similar ways. Models developed by geographers to explain the spatial behavior of licit multinational firms are profitably applied here to the operations of drug trafficking operations.

This book examines the geographic displacement of the illicit drug industry as a side effect of United States foreign policy. To reduce the supply of cocaine and heroin from abroad, the US has relied on coercion against farmers, traffickers and governments, but this has only exacerbated the world's drugs problems.US Foreign Policy and the War on Dr

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.

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.

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.

Though any psychoactive substance can be revered or reviled as a drug, as people’s cultural norms shift, ultimately its status is determined in law by the state. This publication explores the regulation of drugs – alcohol and cannabis to heroin and cocaine – and practices such as social drinking and public injecting under political regimes. Drugs are discussed in their geographical contexts: the colonial legacy of cannabis prohibition for bioprospecting in Africa; the veracity of the persistent notion of the narco-state; Turkey’s governance of drinking amid civil unrest; and alcohol’s place in the neoliberal political economy of Ireland. In addition, drug policies are examined: from problems in managing drug-related litter in the UK to supervised injecting facility provision in Australia; harm reduction in Canada; and the global network of drug policy activists. Place is significant, but porous borders, territorial overlaps and multi-scalar linkages are influential in remaking the world through current challenges to the ‘war on drugs’. This book was originally published as a special issue of Space & Polity.

This is a theoretical and practical guide on how to undertake and navigate advanced research in the arts, humanities and social sciences.