Since the early twentieth century, the United States has led a global prohibition effort against certain drugs in which production restriction and criminalization are emphasized over prevention and treatment as means to reduce problematic drug usage. This “war on drugs� is widely seen to have failed, and periodically de-criminalization and legalization movements arise. Debates continue over whether the problems of addiction and crime associated with illicit drug use stem from their illicit status or the nature of the drugs themselves. In The Long War on Drugs Anne L. Foster explores the origin of the punitive approach to drugs and its continued appeal, despite its obvious flaws. She provides a comprehensive overview, focusing not only on a political history of policy developments, but also on changes in medical practice and knowledge of drugs. Foster also outlines the social and cultural changes prompting different attitudes about drugs, the racial, environmental, and social justice implications of particular drug policies, and the international consequences of US drug policy.

Throughout its history, the United States has been both imperialistic and anticolonial: imperialistic in its expansion across the continent and across oceans to colonies such as the Philippines, and anticolonial in its rhetoric and ideology. How did this contradiction shape its interactions with European colonists and Southeast Asians after the United States joined the ranks of colonial powers in 1898? Anne L. Foster argues that the actions of the United States functioned primarily to uphold, and even strengthen, the colonial order in Southeast Asia. The United States participated in international agreements to track and suppress the region’s communists and radical nationalists, and in economic agreements benefiting the colonial powers. Yet the American presence did not always serve colonial ends; American cultural products (including movies and consumer goods) and its economic practices (such as encouraging indigenous entrepreneurship) were appropriated by Southeast Asians for their own purposes. Scholars have rarely explored the interactions among the European colonies of Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century. Foster is the first to incorporate the United States into such an analysis. As she demonstrates, the presence of the United States as a colonial power in Southeast Asia after the First World War helps to explain the resiliency of colonialism in the region. It also highlights the inexorable and appealing changes that Southeast Asians perceived as possibilities for the region’s future.

Since the early twentieth century, the United States has led a global prohibition effort against certain drugs in which production restriction and criminalization are emphasized over prevention and treatment as means to reduce problematic drug usage. This “war on drugs� is widely seen to have failed, and periodically de-criminalization and legalization movements arise. Debates continue over whether the problems of addiction and crime associated with illicit drug use stem from their illicit status or the nature of the drugs themselves. In The Long War on Drugs Anne L. Foster explores the origin of the punitive approach to drugs and its continued appeal, despite its obvious flaws. She provides a comprehensive overview, focusing not only on a political history of policy developments, but also on changes in medical practice and knowledge of drugs. Foster also outlines the social and cultural changes prompting different attitudes about drugs, the racial, environmental, and social justice implications of particular drug policies, and the international consequences of US drug policy.