Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Politics of Narcotic Drugs brings together leading experts on the drugs trade to provide an accessible yet detailed analysis of the multiple challenges that the contemporary trade in narcotic drugs and its prohibition pose, from the local to the international community. Through the use of country and regional case studies that include Afghanistan, Mexico, Colombia and the Middle East, the drivers of the drugs trade and the security and development dilemmas created by the prohibition of narcotic substances are explored. Contributions that assess the international drug control regime, British anti-drug enforcement organizations, 'narcoterrorism' and options for drug policy reform engage readers in current debates and the narrative frameworks that shape discussion of the drugs issue. The book is an invaluable guide to the dynamic and far-reaching issue of narcotic drugs and the impact of their prohibition on our countries and communities. The chapters are followed by an A-Z glossary of key terms, issues and organizations, and a section of maps and statistics.

On a summer night in 2007, the Azure Party, part of Sydney’s annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, is underway. Alongside the party outfits, drugs, lights, and DJs is a volunteer care team trained to deal with the drug-related emergencies that occasionally occur. But when police appear at the gates with drug-detecting dogs, mild panic ensues. Some patrons down all their drugs, heightening their risk of overdose. Others try their luck at the gates. After twenty-six attendees are arrested with small quantities of illicit substances, the party is shut down and the remaining partygoers disperse into the city streets. For Kane Race, the Azure Party drug search is emblematic of a broader technology of power that converges on embodiment, consumption, and pleasure in the name of health. In Pleasure Consuming Medicine, he illuminates the symbolic role that the illicit drug user fulfills for the neoliberal state. As he demonstrates, the state’s performance of moral sovereignty around substances designated “illicit” bears little relation to the actual dangers of drug consumption; in fact, it exacerbates those dangers. Race does not suggest that drug use is risk-free, good, or bad, but rather that the regulation of drugs has become a site where ideological lessons about the propriety of consumption are propounded. He argues that official discourses about drug use conjure a space where the neoliberal state can be seen to be policing the “excesses” of the amoral market. He explores this normative investment in drug regimes and some “counterpublic health” measures that have emerged in response. These measures, which Race finds in certain pragmatic gay men’s health and HIV prevention practices, are not cloaked in moralistic language, and they do not cast health as antithetical to pleasure.

When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to light during the Vietnam War and then again by the Iran-Contra affair. Broad in scope and extensively documented, Cocaine Politics shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked.

Argues that despite increasing levels of government action, illicit drugs are more readily available than ever, and analyzes the failure of our drug policy

In this unique and engaging book, Sue Pryce tackles the major issues surrounding drug policy. Why do governments persist with prohibition policies, despite their proven inefficacy? Why are some drugs criminalized, and some not? And why does society care about drug use at all? Pryce guides us through drug policy around the world.

One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.