Abstract
It has become a truism that drug prohibitionism is a failure. The 100-year history of the repression against the production, trade, and consumption of a certain number of psychoactive drugs has not reached its declared goals. Those drugs that preoccupied and mobilized the pioneer prohibitionists at the dawn of the twentieth century are today just a fraction of the great amount of illegal substances crossing transborder routes and being used today. Since the initial national antidrug laws and the first international treaties, the variety, quantity, and potency of available illegal drugs has increased; the number of criminal organizations dedicated to this potent market has increased; and multiple levels of violence has spread worldwide from the Andean heights to the streets and slums of the world’s most crowded metropolises.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bagley, B., & Walker, W., III (Eds.). (1996). Drug trafficking in the Americas. Miami, FL: North-South Center Press.
Foucault, M. (2007). Society must be defended: Lectures at Collège de France (1975–1976). New York, NY: Picador/Palgrave McMillan.
Foucault, M. (2008). The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction. New York, NY: Pantheon.
Isacson, A. (2005). Las Fuerzas Armadas de Estados Unidos en la ‘guerra contra las drogas’ [The U.S. Armed Forces in the “war on drugs”]. In C. Youngers, & E. Rose (Eds.), Drogas y democracia en América Latina [Drugs and democracy in Latin America] (pp. 29–84). Buenos Aires: Biblos.
Kan, P. (2009). Drugs and contemporary warfare. Washington, DC: Potomac.
Kopp, P. (2006). Économie de la drogue [The economy of drugs]. Paris: La Découverte.
Labate, B. C., & Rodrigues, T. (2015). Drogas, Política y Sociedad en América Latina y el Caribe [Drugs, politics and society in Latin America and the Caribbean]. México, DF: CIDE.
Marcy, W. (2010). The politics of cocaine: How the U.S. foreign policy has created a thriving drug industry in Central and South America. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.
McAllister, W. (2000). Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century: An international history. New York, NY: Routledge.
Paley, D. (2014). Drug war capitalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Passetti, E. (1991). Das ‘fumeries’ ao narcotráfico [From the “opium fumeries” to drug trafficking]. São Paulo: Educ.
Rodrigues, T. (2015). Drug trafficking and security in contemporary Brazil. In G. Ryan (Ed.), World politics of security (pp. 235–250). Rio de Janeiro: KAS/CEBRI.
Rodrigues, T., & Labate, B. C. (2015). Política de drogas y prohibición en las Américas [Drug policies and prohibition in the Americas]. In B. C. Labate & T. Rodrigues (Eds.), Drogas, Política y Sociedad en América Latina y el Caribe [Drugs, politics and society in Latin American and the Caribbean]. (pp. 29–52). México, DF: CIDE.
Rodrigues, T., & Labate, B. C. (2016). Prohibition and the war on drugs in the Americas: An analytical approach. In B. C. Labate, C. Cavnar, & T. Rodrigues (Eds.), Drug policies and the politics of drugs in the Americas. Heildelberg: Springer (in this volume).
Szasz, T. (1992). Our right to drugs: The case for free market. New York, NY: Praeger.
Youngers, C., & Rose, E. (Eds.). (2005). Drogas y democracia en América Latina [Drugs and democracy in Latin America]. Buenos Aires: Biblos.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Labate, B.C., Cavnar, C., Rodrigues, T. (2016). Introduction: Drugs and Politics in the Americas: A Laboratory for Analysis. In: Labate, B., Cavnar, C., Rodrigues, T. (eds) Drug Policies and the Politics of Drugs in the Americas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29082-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29082-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29080-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29082-9
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)