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Cutting through the myths about the white trade, this is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before. Cocaine is big business and getting bigger. Governments spend millions on a losing war against it, yet it’s still the drug of choice in the West. In Cocaine Nation, Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston, and Tijuana to London and New York. Cutting through the myths about the white trade, this is the story of cocaine as it’s never been told before.

Cocaine is big business and getting bigger. Governments spend millions on an unwinnable war against it, yet it's now the drug of choice in the West. How did the cocaine economy get so huge? Who keeps it running behind the scenes? In The Candy Machine Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston and Tijuana to London and New York. He meets Medillin hitmen, US kingpins, Brazilian traffickers, and talks to soldiers and narcotics officers who fight the gangs and cartels. He traces cocaine's progress from legal 'pick-me-up' to luxury product to global commodity, looks at legalization programmes in countries such as Switzerland, and shows how America's anti-drugs crusade is actually increasing demand. Cutting through the myths about the white market, this is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before.

An in-depth, narrative study of the cocaine industry--from the fields of Colombia to the streets of New York--as it has never been told before.

Why did the international drug regulatory regime of the twentieth century fail to stop an explosive increase in trade and consumption of illegal drugs? This study investigates the histories of smugglers and criminal entrepreneurs in the Netherlands who succeeded in turning the country into the so-called ‘Colombia of Europe’ or, ‘the international drug supermarket’. Increasing state regulations and interventions led to the proliferation of a ‘hydra’ of small, anarchic groups and networks ideally suited to circumvent the enforcement of regulation. Networks of smugglers and suppliers of heroin, cocaine, cannabis, XTC, and other drugs were organized without a strict formal hierarchy and based on personal relations and cultural affinities rather than on institutional arrangements. These networks created a thriving underground industry of illegal synthetic drug laboratories and indoor cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands itself. Their operations were made possible and developed because of the deep historical social and cultural ‘embeddedness’ of criminal anarchy in Dutch society. Using examples from the rich history of drug smuggling, Drug smuggler nation investigates the deeper and hidden grounds of the illegal drug trade, and its effects on our drug policies.

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.

Retells the story of America--and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world--as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce.