roosevelt put it ideas live on. they cannot be destroyed, be destroyed by bombs. thank you very much. speaker, today got a ph.d. in history from cornell. in 1995. has is now associate professor of history at indiana university. her she is a specialist of us

imperialism of relations for the united states, south asia, and especially us narcotics control. her first book was projection of power the united states and europe. colonial southeast asia,. 1919 to 1941. the book is going to present today is much more ambitious in. it is, as it is called, long war on drugs and talks about the perennial problem of fighting the war on drugs as sort of a military and criminal problem rather than as a public health social phenomena on. so please join me in welcoming her. dr. anne foster. so thank you so much to alan for terrific introduction and for the invitation to speak. i really appreciate it and i want to thank for all that you've done to make this go so smoothly. and along alan, this study of u.s. foreign relations history

at temple is helped petra gouda and richard zimmerman who i like to thank for support along the way. so so i'm here today to talk about my new book, the long war on drugs. and this is the title. i will. i will say that the images, the baggies is not actual cocaine. but my neighbor reverse searched and found it's flower. so don't be alarmed. no cocaine was used in the creating its cover. so we probably all have sense of what the war drugs is. news today report on various war on drugs topics even up to the present such as currently this week, whether the philippines will cooperate with international criminal court investigation into. how former president rodrigo duterte conducted the war on drugs. there. we also see the trial of one orlando hernandez from honduras to decide whether he perpetuated the war drugs or undermined the war on drugs. so these things are still

prominent today's society. but as historians we probably back to the presidencies of either richard nixon or ronald reagan. nixon famously war on drugs on april seven. in april 1971, and he said, i quote him in order fight and defeat this enemy, excuse me in order to fight and defeat enemy, it is necessary to wage an all out offensive and his war on drugs did dramatically increase funding for interdiction for activities overseas where drugs were grown and for prison sentences. but the nixon administration also increased funding for prevention and treatment and most notably, they provided the first federal funding for methadone clinics. so a somewhat of a mixed bag. ronald reagan ramped up the military language and tactics such as his 1982 speech suggests and i quote, as i've said before, we've taken down the

surrender and run up the battle flag and we're going to win the war on drugs. and, quote, the reagan dedicated a greater percentage of the funding towards interdiction and surveillance. and, of course, famously passed mandatory minimum sentencing. i would note those were not the first mandatory minimum laws passed for drugs in the united states at the federal level. and the earlier ones were equally discriminatory. the reagan administration used. nancy as spokeswoman for prevention treatment efforts. i think those us of a certain age will still remember the just say no campaign was quite prominent, but funded these efforts at much lower levels than had been done under nixon. certainly are war on drugs act actions and. rhetoric. much scholarship asks why the united continues to take a war on drugs approach to the issue of drugs and if it has not for

now, more than 50 years. in my though the united states has deployed war on drugs tactics for more than 100 years with the same of success making the question all the more compelling. so i wrote this short book in order to explore the continuity as well as changes in u.s. drugs policy over the last 100 plus years. i want anyone who reads this book to have a clearer sense of the scope of, the drugs issue able to better it over time space type of drug. there are a number of inside ice that i gained into the topic from doing this work and today i'll focus on four that i think help us better understand the way the us drug policy developed in an international context and has international implications. and this seems simplistic. the choice to prohibit rather than regulate them in some way

other way was important. setting the stage of the war on approach. it is also made it more difficult up to the present to respond flexibly to evidence the war on drugs approach is not working. my book begins, all the way back in the 1880s and this image is from the 1920s, from an opium in manila in the philippines. but back in the 1880s, before turn of the 20th century, people, opium in particular for a wide variety of medicinal and recreational. the practice was most common in the united states, europe and many of asia, but happened parts of the world and nearly. were there laws against taking opium as long as there has been drug consumption particularly of opiates though people have also misuse them and observers have thought about how to them. in the late 19th century, the number people expressing concern about or not narcotics use was growing. some people were concerned

because they had moral objections to drug use, as they did to talk intoxicants like alcohol. others were concerned because they thought drug use had become more ubiquitous and that vulnerable groups of people, as they called them at the time, such as women children or particular races, people faced more harm than others. the availability also of morphine, cocaine and then heroin during, the late 19th and early 20th century did seem also to be increasing the problematic nature of drug use. so before that, people had mostly by smoking or by consuming things like laudanum, which is a mixture of alcohol and opium. america was with religious motivation, particularly those who had served in china as missionaries were among the most strongly concerned. and they promoted a prohibitionist to regulating opiates. these religiously motivated american anti opium activists

saw their chance in the philippines. soon after, the united states had acquired as a colony in 1898, they lobbied it both through personal connections. president theodore roosevelt and they also used a massive telegraph campaign sending several thousand telegrams to the president advocating prohibition. in 1905, they succeeded in getting a law passed to quote, prohibit absolutely the importation or sale of opium in the philippines. and it came into effect in 1908. u.s. officials realized pretty quickly that enforcing this law would be impossible, surrounded as the philippines was by countries where opium was legal and with the porous borders of the colony. so the fact that americans decided to prohibit it rather than regulate opium steps both stemmed from and prompted many of the issues we associate with the war on drugs approach all present at the beginning of the

us effort and persisting to the present first. and this is a really important point for understanding all that follows. prohibition means any drug use is illegal, with a presumption that such should prompt a policing response. so whether users are sympathetic or not, they are in criminals. any kinds of policies attempting to focus on treatment or what we now call harm reduction have always had to contend with simple fact that drug use against the law and will just take a small moment to use own state of indiana as an example. so indiana has not liberalized policy, but many prosecuting attorneys have said they're not going to prosecute possession of marijuana. they've made the statement publicly that this is not worth focusing on. and then in response, the republican state legislature is

now passing the law that requires the attorney general of the state of indiana to sanction any local prosecutors. do not prosecute these of crimes. they call them. it's a feature in our governors ad campaigns. they call them radical attorneys. so okay. so that's first point. the prohibition itself, rather than regulation of some other form is it sets the stage for all these other things that follow. second, racialized of drug control also has been since the beginning. we are all familiar with racial components of things like mandatory minimum sentencing today. but racialization even started at the very beginning as well, although ethnic groups in both the united states and the philippines use drugs, ethnic chinese in both places were deemed the problematic users. the us law in the philippines in fact was explicitly written in

part to encourage ethnic chinese who americans believed were the most inhabitants of the philippines to be addicted to opium, to leave the philippines to return to china, where they could still consume opium. once those ethnic chinese, many of them had no of return to the philippines because, the chinese exclusion act of 1882 had been extended to apply in the philippines. so unless they had a particular status, if they left, to go back to china, they would not be allowed to come back to the philippines. and american officials explicitly said that they hoped that that would be the result of prohibiting opium in the philippines. so in this we see how racialization of the drugs issue in which a drug can be demonized because of its association a particular ethnic group and in which an ethnic group can be demonized because of its association with a particular drug is embedded from the beginning. so ethnic chinese were considered outsiders because they opium and opium smoking of

opium was considered problematic because it was done by ethnic chinese. finally, the prohibitionist approach was as we can see in the language of the law, focused on preventing drugs from entering us controlled spaces. this conception of the drug that it originated originated outside us controlled spaces does have some validity. opiates have never been grown in commercial levels in any u.s. controlled territories, and neither has cocaine nor marijuana. not as much marijuana as in places. obviously, marijuana is grown in. the united states. so this focus on, the drugs coming in outside, of course, ignores role of demand in creating the drug problem that we talk about a bit in american society and as historians. more problems. however, this focus on drugs as originating outside the states

and coming in to pose a threat means that you to engage in a policing surveillance and militarizing approach the control of drugs. at least have to control them at the border leading to militarization of borders and that and a much more likely as happened ever increasingly over course of the 20th century, you had to go to the place where the drugs were produced and try to eliminate them there. those are outside the united states being in u.s. policing and surveillance efforts are taken outside the united states. we see this already in the 19 tens and twenties since the united states engaged in surveillance and exchange of intelligence and placing of secret agents in spaces around you, around world that were not controlled by the united states particularly surveilling on the pacific ocean for ships coming from asia, but placing agents of the federal bureau of narcotics in countries across europe,

asia. the us war on drugs then has long focused on source, meaning eliminating drugs at the source, or at least preventing them from entering the united states. we'll see in the next two sections, some of the ways this has been both ineffectual, harmful. a second component of the u.s. war on drugs is it has always been conceived in an international context and the u.s. approach always shaped how the drug situation develops around the world. this image is of a girl standing in a legal poppy in turkey. so poppies are producing opiates. opiates are in some medicines as well. right. so you to have legally grown sources of them. and so she's standing in a poppy field where it's legal to grow

opium opium. and these this image. and then the next two photographs are by steve raymer for national geographic thick photo essay that appeared in the 1980s. so as i mentioned, one of the first realizations of u.s. officials after passing that law prohibiting opium in the philippines was that it was going to be very difficult to enforce this law. in fact, i initially interested in this topic when some reports in the dutch archives between between officials, the netherlands indies and the philippines in the 1920s. they were very worried about the smuggling that was taking place between those two colonies. so officials in the philippines thought that good solution to this problem would be for all asian countries to prohibit opium. and they proposed a conference for all the countries that had interest in asia so meaning asian countries and also european imperial powers to meet

and discuss the opium problem. this conference met 1909 in shanghai with some finagling. the u.s. representatives there got agreement that it was everyone's goal to prohibit opium except for medicinal. that was not binding, of course. but u.s. officials pushing. and in 1912, the international opium convention stipulated signatories would work toward prohibiting opium. so this is the putting of this prohibition of opium into law. in 1912. ironically, the united states would push strongly for this international opium commission. and in 1912 still had perfectly legal opium consumption in the united states. and that law prohibiting u.s. opium consumption was passed in 1914 as the harrison narcotics act. so we see that the united states is pushing a prohibition that begins to affect the rest of the

world. but that policy that they push in the rest of the world comes back to affect also u.s. law. the united states moved pretty quickly, obviously, to pass this law. other signatories moved a little slowly, but still, england, france and netherlands all had passed similar prohibition laws by the end of world war one, although only effective, the metropole colonies. they still had legal and profitable for the european countries. the opium prohibition was extended the rest of the world because any countries signing the treaty of paris ending world war one also automatically signed the opium convention. so this became the most at the most basic level international law. by 1919, the league of nations contained an opium advisory committee tasked with implementing this prohibitionist stance. u.s. representatives who of course, represented themselves

not the u.s. government, played powerful roles on this committee throughout, the interwar years, and pushed the choice of prohibition at the internation final level. u.s. leadership promoting a prohibitionist source control approach continued world war two. harry anslinger, who was the notorious head, the federal bureau of narcotics, promoted the 1953 opium protocol in the united nations against wishes of pretty much almost other countries. and because this treaty implemented two changes, most countries did not want the point of this treaty was to sort of regularize all of the various treaties that have been before world war two and bring them all together. but it added two things that anslinger wanted and the united states wanted, but that other countries did not. first of all, it prohibited what then called quasi medical use, what we might call self-medication, a designation which covered uses of opiates to

treat the symptoms of diseases such malaria and cholera as well as to offer pain relief. and this was a common usage of in places where there was not much access to modern medicine or to doctors, and where clean drinking water was not yet completely available. officials from, countries such as india had argued successfully for retention of this exception to prohibitionist laws. so this was passed over their objection. the 1953 opium protocol also that global opium production should be perfectly calibrated to match reported need. so the idea is that you would figure out how much opiates had been used for medical purposes in the year and the next year. production of opiates would have to match number precisely locking go wrong. as you might imagine, only seven countries were legally to grow opium for the medical market.

in this 1953 protocol. and those were india, iran, turkey, yugoslavia, the soviet union and greece. so if you know anything about opium, you might there is a few countries that you would expect that might be growing a little bit of opium that are left off. this list. one of the most adamant people countries to object to it was actually mexico, which had started to grow a significant amount. opiates during world war two, when the markets were divided because of the war. and so they wanted to be able to be in the medical market as well. so countries that wanted to have a piece of this medical market objected out of their own interests. many other countries objected because they thought this would not work. anslinger forced it through, though, although ratification did take some years. so here again, we see where u.s. effort is promoting a policy most countries in the world don't think will and don't find in their interests, and yet is

what is adopted at the level the united nations. so ironic. oddly, u.s. insistence on source control may partly explain why illicit drugs are now so so much more likely be produced in areas geographically close to the united states, particularly mexico and central america. mexico and central america have long produced coca, of course, but they did not begin producing opiates until around time of world war two. but in efforts in the 1970s to enlist to eliminate illicit production initially in turkey and then in the golden triangle of southeast asia had some success. they did manage to reduce production in those areas quite dramatically. overall opiate production, however, did not go down for very long and shifted first to mexico and then further south into central america. as i said, building on a trend beginning already in world war

two. however the suppression of drug production in the golden triangle did not last long. it soon rebounded and began to spread, especially to places like afghanistan. dramatically, the availability of opiates on the world market in. 1986, for instance excuse me, in 1980, for instance. global opium production was about 1000 metric tons from 1980 to 2000. it steadily to about 6000 metric tons. and with the exception of 2000, one production has always been 4000 metric tons, including year at 10,000 metric tons. past it was about 8000 metric tons. that 2001 blip where it was down, of course, might all recognize as the beginning of the u.s. war in afghanistan. and we might euphemistically say that opium did not reach the world market in that year. these numbers also do not

include synthetic opioids that enter the gray and black markets. so essentially the world has become a wash in opiates. the third aspect that i want to talk about today is the relationship of the war on drugs, to the environment and this, you might recognize is a helicopter conducting aerial over a coca field. and this is in sinaloa. again, from the 1980s, the topic of, the relationship of the war on drugs to the environment received too little attention from nearly everyone, but especially historians. i do note that in the most recent u.n. report on drugs, environmental harm is one of the harms of illicit illicit drug drugs that they list. but in my estimation, the war on drugs approach to drugs control is responsible for much of that harm. the harm comes in two ways. one, we might all easily

identify, even if we haven't really thought about it before, which is the harms that come from common methods of eradication. eradication is a necessary component of source control methods, drug control. if you're going to have a source control approach, you're going to want to eradicate at their source. and it is the case manual american manual eradication and excuse me, which means chopping down plants, digging them up, burning them might seem to have only modest effect. and those methods remain common. it's unclear about burning whether that has modest environmental. but in case the taliban, for instance, is currently enforcing its opium ban, which it's doing successfully at the moment, by sending out former soldiers into opium fields with just sticks and they just slash off the heads of the opium poppies, not to destructive of anything except the farmers crop and way to earn a living.

but other eradication methods, of course, can be highly destructive starting as long ago, the 1940s, the common. the 1970s. aerial spraying in places from mexico to colombia to burma, as it was called to bolivia. but even including in the united states, such as which surprised me quite a bit and. georgia these these kind of aerial spraying destroyed opiates coca and marijuana. paraquat and to ford, an agent, a component of agent were used quite a bit in the earlier years. but glyphosate, which we know better as roundup quickly became most popular and i will mention that paraquat is more effective against marijuana and glyphosate against opium poppies and coca bushes. so they kind of gave up on the marijuana spraying in some ways when they moved to glyphosate.

until 2020. us officials were adamantly stating that glyphosate was safe for humans and the environment. we now of course know differently. but colombian farmers been complaining about the problems for years and colombia had the longest, most significant spraying program. their farmers have been saying that it harm their crops, that we're not drugs crops. it was harming their animals, polluting their water, etc. in 1903, to get a sense of what the us response to these complaints was and for a cue from the us department of state said that those complaining quote do not offer objective information because they're illegal. all livelihoods have been affected. so these complaints were completely not taken seriously and dismissed out of hand, even though there was not only the farmers themselves complaining. but a fair number of international observers confirming them.

as harmful and destructive spraying itself is, and they're not another environmental harm stems from the fact that drugs are whether or not they actually end up being eradicated because in order to hide their illicit farming, people who grow drugs move into more remote places, often into protected forests where government oversight is light. i remember this from my own teenage years in tennessee, where the government trying to find not a moonshine stills anymore, but marijuana fields in the in the state forests illicit drug production then is associated with significant habitat destruction from cutting pollution of water, use of herbicides, pesticides by the farmers, building of roads and airstrip pipes, and even the simple dumping all kinds of waste since don't have connections to sources or

regular trash pickup. environmental scientists among the first to notice these effects. some of them, for instance, were saying why are specific bird species declining in a specific area and when they began to investigate that, what they found out was that was company taking places in places where drug illicit drug production was growing. the semi legal status of marijuana in the united states today is in fact the amount of environmental harm places like oregon and california. state law permits, marijuana sale. so of course, farmers to grow marijuana but scarce water are distributed by the federal government. meaning no water rights can be given to anyone who farms any marijuana for sale. and that means if they farm marijuana as of a more diversified crop on their on their land, they can't get any water. if they farm marijuana for sale. but we know marijuana are

thriving in these areas. so that can only be happening if people are stealing the water, then also have incentive to attempt to hide their operations altogether. often into more remote and fragile areas. and stealing electricity along with water to avoid detection. so they're trying to just hide altogether and that a stealing of electricity increases the chance of fire. and obviously that is in the very dry west of, the united states. so wherever we might think justice lies in this situation, in this scenario the effects on the environment are harmful. this topic is in need of more study by historians as well as by political scientists anthropologists and environmental scientists of all kinds. the fact drugs increasingly are synthetic rather than grown in a field has potential only to cause more harm as producers find ever more remote areas,

particularly states that are weak or nonfunctioning or have nonfunctioning governments to mix these powerful chemicals, the residues of which often are very to both humans and the environment environment. my last point looks forward if the war on drugs approach not been effective in reducing use or making it safer, it is becoming less so with the nature of both drugs and drug use now and for the future. so the chart on the slide shows the trajectory drug strength over the course of the time that the united states has engaging in the war on drugs. so at the top, we see processed opium. so that's what happened before the drugs were prohibited people most, people who consumed opiates before drugs were prohibited consumed by either smoking opium through pipe or by consuming it in some form through their mouth but usually

in the west, by consuming it through laudanum, mixed with alcohol. morphine is taken as one because that's the unit that today is most commonly used for medical purposes. and then you can see that things got stronger from there. so if we look on the chart through here, this is approximately until 1980 or so, right? so we don't see a huge increase there. some increase in the strength. dilaudid, which i didn't put on, is about eight times as strong. so it's significantly stronger as well. so we saw already an increase in the powerful illness of these drugs. but once fully synthetic drugs begin to become common from the 1990s on, we see that the strength increases exponentially. so fentanyl, which is causing so many problems today, is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine

and then carfentanil, which no human is supposed to take. those are for animals, elephants that are large that is now the illegal market for humans, it's 10,000 times the strength of morphine. so before the 1990s, most drugs consumed. the illicit market were grown in a field. they came from natural. drug. moving these drugs from field to processing side to point sale had incentive to make these drugs as small and powerful as possible because then they could hide them more and make more money at the end. but at the point of sale so when they sold to the actual consumer. before the 1990s, they had incentive to cut the drugs, to make them weaker because they made more money from the consumer. now, they couldn't do that all the time because people are buying from them, but at least sometimes times people got weaker drugs than expected when

they bought illicit drugs, not stronger drugs. so you never got stronger drugs in the past. you only got weaker drugs, right? today, many drugs in the illicit market are synthetic. sometimes they escape from the pharmaceutical market. sometimes they're made in places where. these things are not as well controlled and come into united states. both fentanyl which we've talked about, and methamphetamine under this criteria. these drugs, especially fentanyl, are already so small and powerful that dealers have no incentive cut them to make them weaker. it's really pennies to them. so they often cut the drugs. now to make them stronger. and that is one of the most important reasons we have so many more overdoses today. about 110,000 in the united states in 2022. those are overdose deaths. excuse me. now, this percentage of

americans with a substance use, a substance abuse disorder has not gone up nearly so much as the overdose deaths have. but when a substantial amount a drug can be smuggled in in an envelope and costs nearly nothing to produce, it's like pennies. a source control approach which the united states has been following the 1890s, is going to work. it's impossible to complicate further. drug production both for manufactured and grown drugs often takes place in countries with poor functioning central government ones that cannot exert control over the whole of their territory. it's no surprise that since 1980s, afghanistan been the source of nearly all the world's heroin. again, development is not particularly new. opium production moved to the golden triangle in the 1960s and seventies because it could be remote from central government.

this sometimes failed states cannot control drug production. so i you as i leave my who take the class with the same as this book. i hope with a greater sense of the complexity and longevity. our meaning both our as people, as the people living in the united states, but also us as people in the world. so our long war on drugs. perhaps it is a bit depressing, but we may also be poised to learn from the past. it seems that marijuana legalization is on an inevitable path to ever more acceptance acceptance with fully now 70% of americans approving up from only 12% in 1969, the first year, the gallup poll asked question. and i'm not saying legalization will solve all the problems but it suggests there's a little bit more rationale in the way that people are thinking about drugs rather than just pushing them

off and saying going to prohibit them. americans also seem more sympathetic to drug users these days, seen many as more ensnared by big pharma then as reckless or dangerous drug use. in relatively polls, about two thirds of americans favor treatment over prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. drugs can be very beneficial. drugs can be harmful. warring on them will never solve the problems of how. to assure that society experiences benefits while minimizing the harms. so the challenges of the drugs issue will increase exponentially. just like the strength, we need to learn from our history now to deemphasize source control as ineffective and promoting violence both in the united states and around the. finding a solution is a much more difficult task. one that i think starts though with thinking about drugs in a

much rational way instead of merely prohibiting them. thank you. so i'm to field my own question. so if anyone has any questions, please let me know. gotcha. yeah. thank you for the talk. it was really excellent too. and just thinking where you left us with inevitability of marijuana legalization in. the united states. i'm wondering if you think that the united internationally can continue influence drug policies in countries much the way that anslinger kind of ham fisted lee, made people pull against it. do we carry the same kind of influence and clout to reverse this war on drugs? you think of something like the philippines territory is beheading people like i mean. right. so i think i'm i would be tempted to say no automatically,

because for one thing, the united states has much less. and the second reason, though, is i think that a lot of countries have bought into the war on drugs sort of approach. and so one of the other news stories i was following this week, or maybe it was last week anyway in south korea and there are pursuing their there they pursue drugs crimes really strongly and they're just really committed to it. and so there's a lot of unravel of a sort of political and cultural commitment to the war on drugs. and then there's a lot of countries. those countries which are weaker where drugs are grown, they make a lot of money from. this approach to it. right. other countries might that. so i think the task is very hard compared to you know convincing someone to do something positively is a lot harder than convincing them to undo that thing thing once they've committed to it. but i do think the united states has them has the most power. and so i think, you know, there's not going be a harry anslinger again, which is a good thing so to to force u.s. policy

on the rest of the world. but think that the united states needs to try, not least sort of in a moral justice way that this is coming out of the united originally. and so the united states needs be making that effort. current president is morally kind of not on board with this. he has a hard time with it for, you know, for understandable reasons. so, yeah, but i do think i do think it's imperative. yeah. yeah. i my favorite follow up question on that, you kind of mentioned like harm reduction and. i when i kind of think about the war on drugs, i think about those kind of like harm reduction community responses to, helping drug users. are there any like other than like a top down u.s. approach to like solving or fixing the war on drugs? are there any like international grass roots movements that are want kind of international legislation or a kind of like international of harm reduction? right.

like, is there only top down stuff? so do have do you want to speak to that or you have another question? i mean, there certainly grassroots organizations. yeah. yeah. but it's very dependent on the local laws and state by state, who's allowed to do that is very different. so we have some it in philadelphia because we hold up these that are in other place is portugal, san francisco. portugal has a really innovative and successful very successful program on harm reduction and decriminalization of what philadelphia is trying. but they put a lot more effort into it, a lot more money into it, and then it's at the national level. so i mean, i'm sympathetic to your desire for local movements, and i think that's where a lot of energy and optimism can come from and they can move their national governments. but it part of what we see with the problems the united states, with philadelphia and oregon and places like that is

decriminalization and harm reduction have a huge uphill battle to fight because people will say, oh, it's decriminalized, it's easier. so they'll move their because they're coming from places where i live, where it's, you know, really, really strictly controlled. and so then the problem becomes too much for that local space, too, to actually respond to effectively. so oregon's problem, oregon's efforts probably would have succeeded if. no one had moved to oregon after they did what they did, but moved there, not surprisingly, because like that approach. so think we can take a little bit more hope from places like portugal where they have sort of wraparound. heroin use which is the most common use is decriminalized and people are constantly being positively offered options for treatment, which are then in fact, they're which is what never in the united states. i think if those if countries move to that, then you'll see things happen at the united nations at the moment the united

nations is absolutely not interested in changing anything. they're really all about source control. yeah. so, yeah, i'm kind of bouncing off of that as well. and it seems like the parties play have a lot of financial to stay in the war on drugs. so in a country that's financially driven how do you how do you promote or how do you get corporate people with the money to sponsor programs that are not feasibly going to make them anything in the short term. you know it's not it's not profitable in the short term to do harm reduction work or to do outreach work. right. i mean, i think you can. i don't think you can make companies do that, like under capitalism. you can't make companies do that. so i think the there's a things we can see. so there's a the us approach typically to this is crop

substitution, right? so something like that where you other means for people to make a living that are sort of promoted by the government is potentially possible but crops substitution has not worked that well and so we could in fact assume that those kinds of efforts for other kinds of drugs will also not work out well. i mean, when we think about afghanistan, like to think afghanistan because like afghanistan didn't promote didn't produce that much before the taliban came in and chopped all the almond and apricot trees. so when people had a viable source of income from something that was appropriate to their local area, they didn't grow that much. opium, the gruesome but not that much. right. once those trees are chopped down now it's terrible for afghanistan. growing almond and apricot trees can't happen in a day. you know, you'll have to support them financially until those come back. so right now, they're growing. it's not like they produce that much wheat in afghanistan. it's way too dry, not appropriate. so people are starving.

i'm 100% sure they will grow opium next year no matter how harshly the taliban to stop them because they need to. so that's the you know this is the problem. this is not a war you can win. it's not a problem you can solve. this is only something you can continue to make efforts at. but that's the same as all kinds of social problems that we don't give up on, you know, we have all kinds of social problems that we continue to fight on and make differences. but that time, yeah. richard historian's, particularly cultural historians, associate the concept and the rhetoric of a war on drugs with something. it's like almost an american trope that it's seeded within american society. you know, we have we war on everything. so my question in terms of what

you were talking about in terms of the international behavior of international cooperation is whether other states also use the metaphor. maybe it's either a metaphor, notion, the rhetoric of a war on drugs and if they don't or they do, what would be the implications of that in terms of collective action or some type of behavior, particularly if you shift away from a number of instruments and tools that you have been discussing with each tend not to be successful. yeah, that's a great question. so the there are it's divided the world about countries that have bought into and use that rhetoric and countries that don't. most of the other developed nations in the world do not. but countries like the philippines, ironically, i don't. i don't follow all of honduras well enough to know the current president, the previous president who's currently on trial. he rhetorically, completely bought into it, and said he was

a huge partner of the united states in war on drugs. and now he's been charge. right. which is what the territory done. i mean, duterte's killed tens of thousands of people in his war in his war on drugs. so we see that there are countries that buy into it for their own political purposes. maybe they also believe it. i don't want to discount that. there's a lot of people who believe drugs are evil and have experiences in which drugs were evil in their lives or their family's lives. and so they think that they that's the only path is to prohibit them. so so i would say, though, that outcome for political cooperation is maybe hopeful in the long term if if the united states decided to pursue a different path because most of the most wealthy and powerful countries have not followed the united states, they've they've acquiesced. they prohibit drugs. they participate to some degree, but they buy it as a as a actually good approach. but countries like honduras, philippines, south korea, they

have so. yes thanks so much for the call. i have a question on one question, just kind of on if their study studies on how much of the global economy or the u.s. economy based on the illicit drug markets and to interpret. this attacking the source, was there ever a historical precedent in where there an attack on the the financing so like the drug lords get a bunch of money cash. mm hmm. they probably marry at all. they. they buy legal things, right was there a historic kind of, like, intervention that the u.s. tried to do in. i mean, i know there's, like, a lot of stories of like, hsbc, like, funneling money in mexico and these banks have been kind of like pushed regulate that market and like, what's the general market? and so so first of all, your first question, i think everyone would really love to know about the amount of the economy that is fueled by these kinds of things. and it's obviously very, very,

very difficult to figure out. i don't have a fig for you exactly that. so guess i want too much of a historian to say what represented. but it's i mean, it's large and if you look for sort of any things about transactions on the dark web the most lucrative of those track interactions on the dark web other than weapons are going to be drugs. and so it's a it's a lot of money. and for some countries it's obviously their whole economy, like afghanistan instance, as far as attacking the financing, they try to attack the financing way. they always try to attack any kind of financial, you know, illegal foreign financial transaction. and but usually, as you say this is getting paid. can be paid in bitcoin but it used to just be a lot of cash and people would usually buy land that's what they commonly bought. and so this was another pressure on protected environments because there would be kind of thing or they would buy, you

know, gold or things like that. so it quickly sort of went out of ability to easily track they, didn't buy trackable things with that cash and then they would, you know, like laundering some time and then later buy all that. so it's a challenging thing. they do effort at it constantly. that's the part which is most like fighting crime. instead of fighting a war. um, yeah. yeah. i have sort of a two part question. sure. how was it determined which countries going to be able to continue opium? yeah. and was there ever to kind of compensate the countries who were no longer like we would have known that mexico still a producer? yeah. yeah. did they at least pretend. so that is a great question. so. so there's.

so you're asking about the countries back in 1953 who were chosen so originally only for were chosen to be in that list and now i'm going to forget which were the exactly. but the soviet union was not in the original list and the union sort of said, hey we're going to cause some other problems politically in the world if you don't let us be in this list. which was ironic because the soviet union didn't produce that much opium, but they wanted the to be able to produce it and they wanted control it for their own. they wanted opium production to be in their side, you know, so that they didn't have to depend on sources that were under were neutral countries or controlled by the united states. so so yeah. but that's a great question about compensation. i can't definitively say no, but i didn't see any and certainly not from mexico because the united states was really upset. mexico had started this production in the first place, even though it was only way there was enough opiates for for

medicinal purposes. during world war two. like there was no other way to get enough opiates if there wouldn't have been if mexico and start producing it. but the united states was really angry at mexico. so mexico also in the forties already to methadone clinics and they didn't like that either so so the united states was really upset mexico about it's pretty progressive drug policies at that time. yeah i think you had a question next year. yeah. i just wonder your thoughts on the linkage or the connection to america in foreign policy, particularly american intervention in the cold war and kind of the acceleration of the drug war? i don't sound too conspiratorial right, but i feel like, you know, there's a lot of intimate connections between american interventions creating destabilized regions or people in these regions and resort to the drug economy you're growing, you listed crops, sell. and so we see this kind of southeast explosion in the heroin trade during the vietnam war. you know, all the tang forces

down there did all this. they went back in at the same time. yeah. and then the contras in the eighties, cocaine in latin america. so i'm wondering also about just the international organized asian aspect of the war on drugs in america pressing on mexico, you need to follow what we tell you. but how like on a structural level, america's broader ten, ten, 600 global yemeni fuel states of exception that create targets for drugs. right. so this is the part of the war on drugs that's written about the most. so it's sort of the reason why i downplay it a little bit in this book, because it's so well written about, but you are absolutely right and you don't have to be going into conspiracies. i mean, it's it's quite evident now the united states was as i talk about it with my students. it's either ignoring or facilitating or actually participating wholesale in this illicit drug markets because creates exactly these untraceable forms of cash that can be used to support

governments otherwise don't have access to money. i mean, there's just no real way to go around that that's that's was happening so yeah so the united states i the reason is that the people who were conducting cold war didn't because they perceived that these would harm people, that they didn't care about. and so this is where we come back to the racialization i don't think that they sat down and go, oh, we're going to, you know, harm black people, america, because we're going to allow more heroin to be produced. i don't think they thought that directly. they just thought nobody who i know nobody who looks like me uses these drugs. so it's fine if more of them are produced. it doesn't really harm anything that i know or care about. so it just that callous is right but but and then served us interests otherwise. yeah. yeah. sort of i would say this is more pertinent to what i'm studying, but when we talk about like more

recently portions of urban environments in the us where you sort of an area where police have not decided to interact as much with trying to police the drugs and then you get sort of open air drug markets, which is a big conversation here. you know, how much of that is the same kind of argument of is that conspire ac or complacency by city organizer to lower rent and basically set these places up for gentrification. yeah. i mean i think i think usually. it's hard to say what's a conspiracy. i would say usually people are not actively in conspiracies, but usually they're allowing things to happen. and whether that's then conspiracy or how, how becomes purposeful is, you know, there are some there that gets crossed, but i think i mean, i think there's so this is this is the other way i want it to sort

of end my talk which is that we have ebbs and flows and so i do think that there is a sense in which city officials including police sometimes don't know what to do because it's intractable problem and so they sort of allow things to go in a way that they people want. and then they say, oh, that's much. and so there sometimes that and then i think there's a sense that, well, yes, we can sort of let this get bad and then we'll have to clear it all out. then we can control that space. i think both of those happen and you have to study each particular instance to figure out which one of those things is happening. i mean, we know, you know, we talk about reagan era war on drugs, those those laws started first in new york city and they were considered reforms that was the sort. and they were asked for by the black community because. they were finding that there neighborhoods were unsafe because there too much street dealing. so they asked there to be more policing and more arrests of,

low level drug offenses. that's what they asked for. and so obviously it didn't turn out right. it and it's interesting, though, the police, new york in those in that time period did not want to do that because they didn't think that was worth their because they're like these people are just going to continue to exist. and there's a million of them. and it's not the real issue. and so it was hard to convince them and it was really only when it happened at the federal that became sort of the sort full blown experience it was, which is not to say that there was not racism in all the actions happening in new york in that time period, but so i think just it's extremely complex and there's a lot of cross-cutting in what everyone's interests are. and that's part of why this approach is so harmful, because there's no mechanisms implementing that that lead to outcomes. really? yeah. and then just, you know, where's i losing reform this i don't i'm

sorry it was it was actually hard because google really didn't want me to keep looking up what the relative strength options were so was getting a little challenging to find. i think so i'm sure i have a very bad file somewhere. all the things i look up. yeah. thank you. i guess my question has to do, with any sort of strategy should be developed more than to maybe convince more followers makers about the fact that the current public policy that is conducted is not effective and it's interesting to observe that based on a quick side analysis of the current effects of, the public policy right now is taking place. it is clear that it's not working. so my question, how do we establish a advocacy that

safeguards to make sure that policymakers will will be more open to to new perspectives because i'm coming from a soft american perspective. i don't know how it works here in the united states, but usually the politicians or candidates for congressional positions these they advocate for something different, such as legalizing it is really complicated. convince you, first of all, to get elected or to do that you a cabinet position. right so i guess my question is how do we start this process of convincing those leaders that are already there in congress, for example, for so many years involved with current public policies to be more open, maybe it's the use of data. example what what kind of approach should we take order to companies that that's great question so to about how to

convince policy makers and politicians because it is risky for them especially the united states and around certain places around world, this is a very would be a very risky thing to advocate for. i think we have a couple of opportunities the united states right now and, maybe these can be applied to other places. i'm not going to say about internal politics of other countries, but in united states, i mean, i do think the liberalization of marijuana laws provides an opportunity for for people to organize around how that's working and and the ways in which it's not causing problems. and to recognize sometimes if it is causing problems, to regulate them, rather than sort of say that's not a problem because. well, one thing we see is that in the united states, there have been swings towards liberalized portion of drug laws. jimmy carter wanted to decriminalize marijuana. he was not only politician who was advocating that in seventies, but as became more

liberalized some some people grew concerned about the effects and so it swung back the other way. right. so you have to if there is a problem, acknowledge it and regulate it. and then you can show that this kind of approach can be more effective. i think that's one strategy. i'm not sure will work. unfortunately, we have of data i think the other strategy is what you suggested is if there's grassroots efforts are trying to work towards in certain places it makes it safer for but you probably have to start small you're going to not probably affect the members. congress right now you're mostly probably going to affect council members. right. and when you see it work, some places or people asking for it in some places gets easier to have happen. i think the other thing is to talk about justice. that was very effective in recent years, talking about the harmful effects on people of these long prison sentence things and those kinds of things. and i think, you know, everyone will respond to a call for justice at some level they may

not agree with your definition of justice, but when you justice as your terminology, no one can argue with that as the sort of goal. right. and so, you know, we had endorsing some reduction in prison sentences for people, you know that's kind of surprising and especially on the drug issue, whatever we think about trump, he has reason to not be in favor of drugs. his brother's alcoholic. that affects how people view drugs when they have that personal bad experience so you know i think i think it's uphill battle for sure. but i think there some some ways to begin the the conversation, as you suggest. yeah. oh, back to like another potential obstacle to sort of, you know, resolving the drug war, which is these corporations that make off the actual drug war. so like the drug dealers, the people providing the

helicopters, the kevlar vests, the roundup. have you found in your research evidence that they have an impact on policy making? right. are they lobbying policy makers or policy makers saying, you know, don't want to upset this company or that company? yeah, i will say i have never found such, but i also that's that's not where i did the bulk of my primary research. i'm going to you know, you probably know you should if you don't talk to aileen teague, she probably could tell you because she's researching exactly right. the ways that the us war on drugs has promotes violence in especially mexico for her. so i would suggest she probably knows i i'm going guess that it doesn't need to be that though so going to be in a more wink wink nudge nudge kind of conversation since it doesn't have to be quite explicit. there are you know, there are they're serving the u.s.

interest that seems obvious everyone so you know the thing that's that i really talk about too much is that those helicopters are used a they're not used that much for spraying spray that many times in a year and then those helicopters available for all kinds of other surveillance and actions against local populations that are against the government's own them. and so that's been the biggest with them. so yeah, yeah. i think we have one right here, right. yeah. question was a little bit specific. it relates back to two of the prior ones about, the finances of the global drug trade and investment, global drug trade, to my knowledge, myanmar, which she mentions was in the golden triangle, was so heavily invested the production of opiates that for a time it was their primary export form of payment for government employees

such as soldiers. i want to ask you to speak a little bit more in detail about that or about broader in state investment, right? so well, in myanmar, the main of opiates were that was in the seventies and eighties, primarily into the early 1990s that i think you're talking about. and those were mostly non-governmental groups directly that were the main ones. so saw the main person who was in charge. he had a shan state army in sean state, northern part of burma and burma alone was producing 80% of the world's heroin a time period where burma is not a very big country. so that was impressive. but as you say burma was a pretty nonfunctioning state and these revenues were critical to it's to sort of continue to survive though the revenues were mostly generated by non-state actors. they were making their way into

government coffers through taxations, through bribes, through, you know, seizures, all kinds of methods and did enable that state to continue to exist. so i that's what we see happening and it sort of circles around the world now. you know, we talk casually about narco states in central and south america. we talk about afghanistan of these countries which are the main producers of drugs. and then they come to be completely dependent. but we see, you know, myanmar now is the producer of the majority of the world's drugs. so it's possible to switch away from it. it's not a completely good story in myanmar because, of course, they now produce a lot of methamphetamine. so so afghanistan over their heroin component. but myanmar picked up some methamphetamine, but it is possible to that away. but oftentimes it usually moves just sort of around to different of these states. so, yeah, i hope that answers

your question. okay, perfect. final question. okay. let's thank our guests. thank you also