Drug War

• 
• 8/8/2021
  

  Drug Prohibition and the Political Roots of Cartel Violence in Mexico

  by Benjamin T. Smith

  Violence is not so much in the DNA of the drug trade as the DNA of drug prohibition. And until both American and Mexican police forces stop treating it like a war, the violence won’t stop.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/14/2021
  

  Lost Cause: 50 Years of the Drug War in Latin America

  Latin America has been fundamentally transformed by Richard Nixon's launch of the War on Drugs in 1971. The Post presents a series of articles by Latin American journalists describing the consequences. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2021
  

  Supreme Court Rejects Sentence Reductions for Minor Crack Offenses

  Justices disagreed about what lessons to draw from the history of the 1986 Crime Bill that created the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offenses. Does the fact that some Black organizations at the time supported the law excuse its racist impact? 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  6/8/2021
  

  The U.S. War On Drugs Helped Unleash The Violence In Colombia Today

  by Kyle Longley

  Counternarcotics operations have been a pretext for funding a buildup of the Colombian security forces, allowing a US-friendly rightist government to avoid dealing with the economic and social causes of unrest. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/9/2020
  

  Cienfuegos Must also Answer for the Apatzingán Massacre

  by Laura Castellanos

  The former Secretary of National Defense for Mexico has been arrested on charges related to drug trafficking. He must face accountability for overseeing a security regime that perpetrated coordinated violence against journalists and civilians. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole (Urban History Association)
  10/5/2020
  

  “Entrepreneurial Greed” — A Review Of Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, And The Decade Of Greed

  David Farber's book examines the entrepreneurial culture of crack cocaine and how the drug trade meshed with Reagan-era changes in urban political economy.

• 
• SOURCE: North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
  4/30/2020
  

  A History of Inconvenient Allies and Convenient Enemies

  by Alexander Aviña

  The history of American alliances abroad doesn't make sense as a drug control strategy, but is consistent with a strategy of invoking the war on drugs to punish governments that resist U.S. domination.

• 
• 11/18/18
  

  What’s More Deadly to Mexicans than the Drug War? Diabetes.

  by Alyshia Gálvez

  Here’s why that should concern Americans in the wake of the negotiations over the US, Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement.