Winner, Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 2011 Thousands of people die in drug-related violence every year in Mexico. Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, adjacent to El Paso, Texas, has become the most violent city in the Mexican drug war. Much of the cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine consumed in the United States is imported across the Mexican border, making El Paso/Juarez one of the major drug-trafficking venues in the world. In this anthropological study of drug trafficking and anti-drug law enforcement efforts on the U.S.-Mexico border, Howard Campbell uses an ethnographic perspective to chronicle the recent Mexican drug war, focusing especially on people and events in the El Paso/Juarez area. It is the first social science study of the violent drug war that is tearing Mexico apart. Based on deep access to the drug-smuggling world, this study presents the drug war through the eyes and lives of direct participants. Half of the book consists of oral histories from drug traffickers, and the other half from law enforcement officials. There is much journalistic coverage of the drug war, but very seldom are the lived experiences of traffickers and "narcs" presented in such vivid detail. In addition to providing an up-close, personal view of the drug-trafficking world, Campbell explains and analyzes the functioning of drug cartels, the corruption that facilitates drug trafficking, the strategies of smugglers and anti-narcotics officials, and the perilous culture of drug trafficking that Campbell refers to as the "Drug War Zone."

Cutting through the myths about the white market, Tome Feiling's The Candy Machine is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before. Gabrielle unwinds at weekends with a line of coke - and also works for a major police force. Juan Pablo is a drugs mule in Bogota who gets his stash from a sweathouse. Belica started picking coca when she was eleven. Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore, thinks legalization's the only way ... Cocaine is big business. 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 Medellin hitmen, US kingpins, British crack users and Brazilian traffickers, and talks to the soldiers and narcotics officers who fight the gangs. 'An important study of the cultivation, usage and suppression of cocaine' Financial Times 'The Candy Machine is highly addictive' Metro 'It is hard to decide if Tom Feiling's future lies as a QC or the new Paul Theroux. A vivid, argumentative, arresting book' Sunday Telegraph 'I've read a few documentary accounts of the rise of cocaine, and this might be the best of them' Evening Standard Tom Feiling is an award-winning documentary film-maker. He spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia, which won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and was broadcast in four countries. In 2003 he became Campaigns Director for the TUC's Justice for Colombia campaign, which organizes for human rights in Colombia. His book Short Walks from Bogota: Journeys in the new Colombia is published by Allen Lane.

The Golden Triangle region that joins Burma, Thailand, and Laos is one of the global centers of opiate and methamphetamine production. Opportunistic Chinese businessmen and leaders of various armed groups are largely responsible for the manufacture of these drugs. The region is defined by the apparently conflicting parallel strands of criminality and efforts at state building, a tension embodied by a group of individuals who are simultaneously local political leaders, drug entrepreneurs, and members of heavily armed militias.

Ko-lin Chin, a Chinese American criminologist who was born and raised in Burma, conducted five hundred face-to-face interviews with poppy growers, drug dealers, drug users, armed group leaders, law-enforcement authorities, and other key informants in Burma, Thailand, and China. The Golden Triangle provides a lively portrait of a region in constant transition, a place where political development is intimately linked to the vagaries of the global market in illicit drugs.

Chin explains the nature of opium growing, heroin and methamphetamine production, drug sales, and drug use. He also shows how government officials who live in these areas view themselves not as drug kingpins, but as people who are carrying the responsibility for local economic development on their shoulders.

Drug-Crime Connections challenges the assumption that there is a widespread association between drug use and crime. Instead, it argues that there are many highly specific connections. The authors draw together in a single volume a wide range of findings from a study of nearly 5,000 arrestees interviewed as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme. It provides an in-depth study of the nature of drug-crime connections, as well as an investigation into drug use generally among criminals and the kinds of crimes that they commit. They explore topics that previously have fallen outside the drug-crime debate, such as gender and drugs, ethnicity and drugs, gangs, guns, drug markets, and treatment needs. The book provides both an up-to-date review of the literature and a concise summary of a major study on the connection between drug use and crime.

Drug-Crime Connections challenges the assumption that there is a widespread association between drug use and crime. Instead, it argues that there are many highly specific connections. The authors draw together in a single volume a wide range of findings from a study of nearly 5,000 arrestees interviewed as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme. It provides an in-depth study of the nature of drug-crime connections, as well as an investigation into drug use generally among criminals and the kinds of crimes that they commit. They explore topics that previously have fallen outside the drug-crime debate, such as gender and drugs, ethnicity and drugs, gangs, guns, drug markets, and treatment needs. The book provides both an up-to-date review of the literature and a concise summary of a major study on the connection between drug use and crime.

Torgoff examines how America's fascination with the new frontiers of inner space and consciousness gave birth to a mass culture of recreational drug use. Features interviews with eyewitnesses to the drug revolution, including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Grace Slick, and many others.

Presents a concise, accessible, objective view of where the United States has been, now stands, and is going in the future in its long "war on drugs." The authors assess the success of drug policies to date and review possible reasons why they have not been more successful. They recommend management of the drug problem for the long term, use of different policy levers depending on the situation, and tolerance of cross-state policy variation.

"A great resource for students and scholars. Chock-full of up-to-date, reliable information, this book has practically everything you need to know about contemporary Colombia all in one package." --Herbert Braun, author of Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia The South American nation of Colombia has seen more than forty years of unrest, conflict, and civil war. It is a country in which social violence and warfare are intricately intertwined. Colombia is also notorious for its drug trade, being one of the leading producers of cocaine in the world, and for its central role as a staging ground for the U.S. "war on drugs." Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to draw political links between the Colombian drug trade, guerrilla organizations, and terrorism. Inside Colombia offers a valuable introduction and quick reference guide to this complex nation. With chapters devoted to history, human rights issues, the economy, drugs, the controversial antidrug intervention known as Plan Colombia, and relations with the United States, the book offers an easily accessible and comprehensive overview. Readers will learn about the major players in the conflicts, significant political figures, how Colombia's economy has fared in the twentieth century, how the country's geography influences its politics and economy, and how U.S. intervention shapes Colombia's political scene. Grace Livingstone is a journalist who regularly contributes to a range of publications on Latin American current affairs and has reported for the BBC World Service. She is currently based in Venezuela where she is a correspondent for The Guardian. Jenny Pearce is the coauthor of Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration.

A forceful argument for why we need to repeal drug prohibition

In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American. El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. He is a hit man who came off the killing fields alive. He left the business and turned to Christ. And then he decided to tell the story of his life and work. Charles Bowden first encountered El Sicario while reporting for the book "Murder City." As trust between the two men developed, Bowden bore witness to the Sicario's unfolding confession, and decided to tell his story. The well-spoken man that emerges from the pages of "El Sicario" is one who has been groomed by poverty and driven by a refusal to be one more statistic in the failure of Mexico. He is not boastful, he claims no major standing in organized crime. But he can explain in detail not only torture and murder, but how power is distributed and used in the arrangement between the public Mexican state and law enforcement on the ground - where terror and slaughter are simply tools in implementing policy for both the police and the cartels. And he is not an outlaw or a rebel. He is the state. When he headed the state police anti-kidnapping squad in Juarez, he was also running a kidnapping ring in Juarez. When he was killing people for money in Juarez, he was sharpening his marksmanship at the Federal Police range. Now he lives in the United States as a fugitive. One cartel has a quarter million dollar contract on his head. Another cartel is trying to recruit him. He speaks as a free man and of his own free will - there are no charges against him. He is a lonely voice - no one with his background has ever come forward and talked. He is the future - there are thousands of men like him in Mexico and there will be more in other places. He is the truth no one wants to hear.

The No 1 Bestseller! 'A triumph' Nicola Tallant, Sunday World Crime World podcast 'An incredible catalogue of mayhem ... amazing' Pat Kenny, Newstalk 'Riveting' Irish Times Meet the Wilsons - the deadliest family in crime Brothers Eric, Keith and John Wilson, their cousin Alan, and nephew Luke shared a trade - assassination. Working for Ireland's criminal gangs they brought bloodshed and chaos to the streets. The Wilsons were not choosy about their targets. Hutches, Real IRA chiefs or random opponents from pub rows - they were all the same to them. Nor were they picky about motives - as long as the price was right, they asked no questions. The Hitmen is the shocking story of how a family cornered the market in intimidation and vengeance. It details the terrible cost in human suffering, particularly the death of an innocent teenage girl, Mariaora Rostas, when she randomly crossed their path. And it reveals how, one by one, each of the Wilsons was put out of business. The Hitmen draws on exclusive access to wire taps, case files and interviews with sources close to the gang who have never spoken before. No 1 bestselling authors Stephen Breen and Owen Conlon have written an extraordinary account of a family business like no other.

The Story-Takers charts new territory in public pedagogy through an exploration of the multiple forms of communal protests against the mafia in Sicily. Writing at the rich juncture of cultural, feminist, and psychoanalytic theories, Paula M. Salvio draws on visual and textual representations including shrines to those murdered by the mafia, photographs, and literary and cinematic narratives, to explore how trauma and mourning inspire solidarity and a quest for justice among educators, activists, artists, and journalists living and working in Italy. Salvio reveals how the anti-mafia movement is being brought out from behind the curtains, with educators leading the charge. She critically analyses six cases of communal acts of anti-mafia solidarity and argues that transitional justice requires radical approaches to pedagogy that are best informed by journalists, educators, and activists working to remember, not only victims of trauma, but those who resist trauma and violence.

Human rights violations occurring as a consequence of drug control and enforcement are a growing concern, and raise questions of treaty interpretation and of the appropriate balancing of concomitant obligations within the drug control and human rights treaty regimes. Tracing the evolution of international drug control law since 1909, this book explores the tensions between the regime's self-described humanitarian aspirations and its suppression of a common human behaviour as a form of 'evil'. Drawing on domestic, regional and international examples and case law, it posits the development of a dynamic, human rights-based interpretative approach to resolve tensions and conflicts between the regimes in a manner that safeguards human rights. Highlighting an important and emerging area of human rights inquiry from an international legal perspective, this book is a key resource for those working and studying in this field.

Since the late 1990s, marijuana grow operations have been identified by media and others as a new and dangerous criminal activity of "epidemic" proportions. With Killer Weed, Susan C. Boyd and Connie Carter use their analysis of fifteen years of newspaper coverage to show how consensus about the dangerous people and practices associated with marijuana cultivation was created and disseminated by numerous spokespeople including police, RCMP, and the media in Canada. The authors focus on the context of media reports in Canada to show how claims about marijuana cultivation have intensified the perception that this activity poses "significant" dangers to public safety and thus is an appropriate target for Canada's war on drugs. Boyd and Carter carefully show how the media draw on the same spokespeople to tell the same story again and again, and how a limited number of messages has led to an expanding anti-drug campaign that uses not only police, but BC Hydro and local municipalities to crack down on drug production. Going beyond the newspapers, Killer Weed examines how legal, political, and civil initiatives that have emerged from the media narrative have troubling consequences for a shrinking Canadian civil society.

It was a David and Goliath style battle: Australian investigators up against a global organised crime empire. What seemed like an impossible task resulted in one of the most ambitious investigations in the world, infiltrating international money laundering streams and exposing the global crime bosses in control of the world's drug trade. The Sting is the never-before-told story of the ongoing efforts of Australia's most secretive and powerful law enforcement agency to topple the new face of organised crime. This is a tech-savvy, billion-dollar empire with tentacles reaching across the world, from outlaw motorcycle gangs to powerful Asian crime syndicates to law and government agencies. This is not a conventional story of good versus evil. It chronicles criminal, law enforcement and political tactics through the eyes of its major players-the criminal investigators, the international crime bosses, the senator, the drug cook and the investigative journalist-and exposes what many in power don't want the public to know.

There remains substantial agreement among the international community on many aspects of the contemporary UN drug control regime. However, diverging views on the non-medical and non-scientific use of a range of controlled substances make drug policy an increasingly contested and transitionary field of multinational cooperation. Employing a fine-grained and interdisciplinary approach, this book provides the first integrated analysis of the sources, manifestations and sometimes paradoxical implications of this divergence. The author develops an original explanatory framework through which to understand better the dynamic and tense intersection between policy shifts at varying levels of governance and the regime's core prohibitive norm. Highlighting the centrality of the harm reduction approach and tolerant cannabis policies to an ongoing process of regime transformation, this book examines the efforts of those actors seeking to defend the existing international control framework and explores rationales and scenarios which may lead to the international community moving beyond it.

There remains substantial agreement among the international community on many aspects of the contemporary UN drug control regime. However, diverging views on the non-medical and non-scientific use of a range of controlled substances make drug policy an increasingly contested and transitionary field of multinational cooperation. Employing a fine-grained and interdisciplinary approach, this book provides the first integrated analysis of the sources, manifestations and sometimes paradoxical implications of this divergence. The author develops an original explanatory framework through which to understand better the dynamic and tense intersection between policy shifts at varying levels of governance and the regime's core prohibitive norm. Highlighting the centrality of the harm reduction approach and tolerant cannabis policies to an ongoing process of regime transformation, this book examines the efforts of those actors seeking to defend the existing international control framework and explores rationales and scenarios which may lead to the international community moving beyond it.

The relationship between drugs and today s wars has grown more noticeable since the end of the Cold War and will likely gather strength in this era of increased globalization. Many violent groups and governments have recently turned to illicit narcotics in their entrepreneurial quests to stay viable in the post Cold War world. It is no coincidence that many of the most violent and ongoing conflicts, from the Balkans to the Hindu Kush, from the Andes to the Golden Triangle, occur in areas of widespread drug production and well-traveled distribution routes.Interdisciplinary in its approach, "Drugs and Contemporary Warfare" investigates the convergence of drugs and modern warfare, the violent actors involved in the drug trade, the drugs they produce and distribute, and how these drugs enter into battlefield conflicts and give rise to combat narcosis. Paul Rexton Kan then examines counternarcotics operations and suggests solutions to curb the drug trade s effects on contemporary conflict. He offers several broad strategies that refine assessments, policies, and operations to promote improvement in social, economic, and political conditions. The hope is that these strategies will help citizens create sustainable societies and robust governments in war-afflicted countries struggling under the drug trade s shadow. In a world searching for peace, the answer may not solely be on the battlefield but also on the front line against illegal narcotics. With a foreword by Moises Naim, editor in chief of "Foreign Policy" magazine and the author of "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy."

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.

An intelligent, atmospheric police procedural series for fans of John Le Carre and Mick Heron "The most important thing that's happened in Mexican literature in the last thirty years" Gaby Wood, Sunday Telegraph. Detective Lefty Mendieta makes a deal with the devil in a gripping new novel from the Godfather of Narco Lit Short of leads on the execution-style murder of a fortune-teller, Detective Lefty Mendieta turns to his contacts in the drug underworld. They oblige, but there is a quid pro quo: Help Samantha Valdes, head of the Pacific Cartel, slip through the net of Mexican army and federal police encircling the hospital where she is recovering after an attempt on her life. Grudgingly he agrees, but then gets caught on camera during the escape and becomes headline news. Fired from the force and on the run from the Feds, Lefty again seeks Samantha's help when he learns that his son Jason has been kidnapped in Los Angeles. There, he must come to terms with the woman who broke his heart, while contending with a thicket of conspiracies, feints and double-crosses that further blur the distinction between crime and the law. Betrayal is certain. To save his son, who will Lefty sell out? Translated from the Spanish by Mark Fried

What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful young literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life? In his utterly compulsive narrative, Bill Clegg leads us through the grimiest back-rooms of Manhattan's underbelly, through scenes of blank-eyed sex and squalor, into the febrile paranoia of a mind gone out of control. Ninety Days begins where Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man ends - and tells the wrenching story of Bill Clegg's battle to reclaim his life. The goal is ninety: just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction. But as any recovering addict knows, hitting rock bottom is just the beginning. . . Published for the first time in one volume: Bill Clegg's unflinching account of the addiction that nearly ended everything.

William J. Bennett, former director of the National Drug Control policy under President George H.W. Bush and bestselling author of The Book of Virtues, and co-author Robert White provide strong societal and scientific arguments against the legalization of marijuana. Marijuana, once considered worthy of condemnation, has in recent years become a "medicine," legalized fully in four states, with others expected to follow. But the dangers are clear. According to Bennett's research, more Americans are admitted to treatment facilities for marijuana use than for any other illegal drug. Studies have shown a link between marijuana use and abnormal brain structure and development. From William Bennett comes a call-to-action for the 46 states that know better than to support full legalization, and a voice of reason for millions who have jumped on the legalization bandwagon because they haven't had access to the facts.