War on Drugs

In this article, I focus on a set of collectively stitched handkerchiefs commemorating victims of Mexico’s “war on drugs.” I propose that these embroideries completed in relays can be conceived as the tangible manifestation of work done by collaboration networks articulated by the response of the participants to the call for a critical exercise of citizenship. I posit that the word “citizenship” can be read either as domestic citizenry, that is, as exhorting Mexican nationals to commit to the political struggle against violence and impunity; or as global citizenship, that is, as promoting a responsibility towards and a sense of interconnectedness with a common humanity. In both cases, the call for a critical exercise of citizenship expresses a concern to promote and act in accordance with an ethics of nonviolence, informed by the principles of indigenous communal polities and by the longstanding connection between embroidery and feminine moral virtue imported into New Spain during t...

This paper traces the current prescription opioid crisis to some of its origins in the orders of race, colonialism and empire that connect our present day to the past. It is something of a sketch of a larger work that seeks to complicate our understanding of the power dynamics at play in what some estimate to be the world's most profound anthropogenic public health crisis

Since the early 19 th century, the U.S. has exerted strong political and economic influence over Latin America. The painful experiences of the Cold War, when the U.S. supported military dictatorships across the region, and assisted anti-communist forces in Central America, left deep scars in Latin America's collective memory. This article claims that while the Obama administration undertook a series of measures to re-establish some trust, Donald Trump's aggressive rhetoric against immigrants from Latin America, his Cuba Policy, and his threat of using military force in Venezuela have reinforced a negative image of the U.S. It also argues that threats of budget cuts for foreign aid and a protectionist trade policy are undermining the U.S. capacity to exert influence on its southern neighbours. This will most likely bring the region closer to China and other extra-regional powers, which have been increasing their profile there in recent years.

Impending regulation of California's marijuana industry demands a quantifiable understanding of the extent of cultivation and adequacy of water storage on private lands long devoted to a dispersed, but commercial-scale, unregulated marijuana industry. Water storage is a critical factor, given both California's droughts and its climate: indoor plants are grown under lights year-round, and outdoor plants are grown during the dry months. This research aimed to quantify marijuana cultivation and water storage in the Redwood Creek watershed of southern Humboldt County, where major land use changes have taken place since the late 1960s. Using Google Earth imagery and geospatial analysis, an inspection of 369 assessor's parcels located within or partly within the watershed yielded 303 greenhouses, 100 outdoor cultivation scenes, 164 water tanks, and 51 installed ponds. Estimating the number of water-storage tanks was much more challenging than estimating the number of cultivation sites; it is virtually certain that numerous tanks are under the forest canopy and not visible. The only way to verify their number and holding capacity would be through either ground truthing or GIS analysis using point-cloud data. The latter is costly to collect and process; therefore, given that many landowners who have engaged in unregulated marijuana cultivation are loath to grant access to outside parties, at this juncture it may be difficult for academic researchers, state and county regulators, environmental inspectors, and other interested parties to measure some of the industry's existing environmental impacts.

Abstract
Background
Between the years 2017–2019 in Philadelphia, more than 70% of all deaths from opioid overdose occurred in a private residence. To learn more about home-based opioid use and overdose, researchers conducted qualitative interviews with next of kin of overdose victims to learn their perceptions about the decedent's drug use and their opinions about city-led harm reduction efforts, specifically naloxone administration and collaborative efforts to open an overdose prevention site.

Methods
In 2019, researchers conducted 35 qualitative interviews with next of kin of persons who died of opioid overdose in Philadelphia in 2017. Data were coded and analyzed using NVivo software.

Results
Data reveal that while persons who use drugs may benefit from enhanced harm reduction interventions that target their family members and caregivers including naloxone education and public health messaging about overdose prevention, these efforts may be up against other realities that Philadelphia families navigate—in particular structural inequalities exacerbated by decades of “War on Drugs” policies.

Conclusion
Existing health disparities and structural barriers to care increase vulnerability to overdose and highlight the urgency to collaborate with impacted families and communities to design relevant harm reduction interventions. Without efforts to redress the consequences of war on drug policies, however, harm reduction interventions will not reach their full potential.

An analysis of economic development strategy in West Baltimore n the 90s and how neoliberal economic theory produced the conditions leading to the Baltimore Uprising of 2015.

Concludes with an analysis of how investing in indigenous Black run microenterprise is an alternative disruptive and counterproductive large scale neoliberal economic interventions in Black communitites.

This  study  examines  the  life  of  Crips  cofounder  Stanley “Tookie”  Williams  and  the  controversy  surrounding  his multiple  nominations  for  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize.  After being sentenced to death for a quadruple murder, Williams underwent a period of radical transformation and became an internationally recognized ambassador for peace. From San  Quentin’s  death  row,  Williams  supported  several  in-ternationally  recognized  gang  peace  initiatives  including the  1992  Watts  truce,  the  1993  Summit  on  Urban  Peace and Justice, Hands Across America, and the  2004 Tookie Protocol  for  Peace.  This  article  explores  the  challenges Williams faced in his evolution from a gang member to a peace activist, his role in these projects, and how neoliberal criminal  justice  reforms  undermined  his  global  efforts  to promote grassroots peace coalitions.

This 2nd edition of the internationally acclaimed guide to forensic stable isotope analysis uses real-world examples to bridge discussions of the basic science, instrumentation and analytical techniques underlying forensic isotope profiling and its various technical applications. Case studies describe an array of applications, many of which were developed by the author himself. They include cases in which isotope profiling was used in murder, and drugs-related crime investigations, as well as for pharmaceutical and food authenticity control studies.

Updated with coverage of exciting advances occurring in the field since the publication of the 1st edition, this 2nd edition explores innovative new techniques and applications in forensic isotope profiling, as well as key findings from original research. More than a simple update, though, this edition has been significantly revised in order to address serious problems that can arise from non-comparable and unfit-for-purpose stable isotope data. To that end, Part II has been virtually rewritten with greater emphasis now being placed on important quality control issues in stable isotope analysis in general and forensic stable isotope analysis in particular.

Terence McKenna argued that sovereignty over one’s consciousness is the next great civil rights struggle after sexism, racism, and homophobia. “Coming out” about one’s psychedelic identity, interests, and/or experiences is an important part of redefining the public perception of psychedelics and of those who choose to experience their effects. Even non-using “allies” (comparable to LGBTQ allies) can join the conversation in supportive roles. In light of the shifting legal status of psychoactive plants and chemicals, what might it mean to identify as psychedelic in a post-prohibition world?

The rise of crack cocaine in the late 1980s propelled the war on drugs. The experience of Canton, Ohio, shows how the response to crack solidified mass incarceration. A declining industrial city of 84,000 people in northeast Ohio with deep-seated racial divides, it was overwhelmed by aggressive, enterprising crack dealers from outside the city. In response, politicians and residents united behind the strategy of incessant arrests and drastic prison sentences. The law-enforcement offensive worsened conditions while pursuing African Americans at blatantly disproportionate rates, but few people engaged in reframing the drug problem. Instead, a punitive citizenry positioned punishment as the principal remedy. The emergency foreclosed on more comprehensive assessments of the city’s tribulations, while the criminal justice system emerged as the paramount institution.

2019. INTRODUCCIÓN: Desde mediados del siglo XX, el fenómeno del narcotráfico empezó a evolucionar y a convertirse en una problemática diseminada a nivel global, generando grandes repercusiones en diversos ámbitos, como lo son el político, el económico y el social, pues ha quedado en evidencia que tiene el poder de desestabilizar Estados, de infiltrarse e incluso corromper instituciones democráticas y sociales (Gallego, 2012). Este trabajo tiene por objeto contribuir, mediante el materialismo histórico de Karl Marx, al entendimiento histórico y social de este fenómeno, intentando realzar los orígenes del mismo en Colombia, con el fin de obtener antecedentes que permitan comprender el nivel de influencia de la subcultura de las Organizaciones Criminales ligadas al narcotráfico lideradas actualmente por ciudadanos colombianos radicados en Chile. Como ya se mencionó en los párrafos anteriores, el presente trabajo se enfoca en un análisis predominantemente histórico, aplicando la teoría del materialismo histórico de Karl Marx, la cual es entendida como la interpretación o concepción del acontecer histórico, en clave económica. En este contexto, es dable considerar que para Marx, el ser humano presenta necesidades materiales, generándose el nexo con la economía, debido a que estima que el hombre satisface dichas necesidades, transformando la naturaleza a través de su trabajo, pudiendo dirigirlo a su voluntad, por ser consciente de su actividad, la cual además, no realiza en solitario, sino que dicha actividad transformadora, la realiza junto a otros hombres, es decir, en sociedad. Todo lo anterior, es lo que Marx llama "producción social de la vida", pues el hombre se relaciona con otros hombres para producir. Así entonces, el devenir histórico de la humanidad, es la evolución de las formas de producción y de conseguir los medios de subsistencia de los hombres en sociedad (S.N, s.f).

In this article, we contrast the state-sponsored memory site Memorial a las Víctimas de la Violencia en México with the citizen memorial performed by the Iniciativa Bordando por la paz y la memoria: una víctima, un pañuelo on 1 December 2012. We argue that whereas the Memorial’s solidity, permanence, and strength embody the Mexican federal government’s insistence on denying the state’s responsibility for human rights abuses perpetrated within the framework of the so-called ‘war on drugs’, the flexibility and fragility of the 1 December citizen memorial and its dismantling during the riots on the same day attest to the performativity and contingency of memory-making processes. Furthermore, we claim that the break-up of the embroidery network that took place after 1 December shows that counter-memories are also arenas of dissent, insofar as debates on how to remember remain open and susceptible to conflicting views.

Des champignons hallucinogènes au LSD, du coca à la cocaïne, des amphétamines à l'ecstasy, cet ouvrage raconte une autre histoire des guerres, depuis Homère jusqu'aux conflits actuels au Moyen-Orient. Il démontre que les soldats de toutes époques et de toutes civilisations ont souvent eu recours aux drogues et alcools, de leur propre initiative, ou grâce à leurs hiérarchies. Si l'usage de drogues par les GI's américains au Vietnam ou les nazis pendant le second conflit mondial était déjà documenté, Kamienski élargit de façon spectaculaire le tableau en dévoilant une pratique quasi universelle, des Vikings aux armées high-tech du futur. On y apprend comment le haschich a conquis les Européens pendant la campagne d'Egypte de Napoléon, comment l'opium s'est imposé pendant la guerre civile américaine, avant que la Première Guerre mondiale ne crée un marché de la drogue en Amérique du nord, ou encore comment on enrôle les enfants soldats de l'Afrique actuelle. Le but de ces pratiques universelles ? Vaincre la peur, doper les guerriers au combat, supporter le manque de sommeil, surmonter la dépression. Aujourd'hui, en toute légalité, des laboratoires (y compris français) préparent les drogues du futur qui permettront de réguler le sommeil, supprimer les syndromes post-traumatiques, mais aussi droguer l'ennemi à son insu pour l'amener à renoncer au combat. Des perspectives bien réelles qui ouvrent de nombreuses questions éthiques et philosophiques. Une histoire vraie qui ressemble parfois aux romans déjantés de Tom Wolfe ou de Hunter S. Thompson.

Este artículo reconstruye los elementos simbólicos y prácticos que subyacen bajo la disputa reciente por la tipificación del delito de “desaparición forzada” en México. El análisis parte de la comprensión de un contexto en el que violencia política y violencia criminal se traslapan y confunden, generando nuevos retos
para atender la demanda de las víctimas de este crimen. Los hallazgos derivan en un cuestionamiento sobre los límites y alcances del discurso de los derechos humanos y la necesidad de “vernaculizar” la categoría de desaparición forzada para enmendar las formas de exclusión que plantean los criterios preestablecidos.

This article is a mixed methods research study on Genaro García Luna-former head of Mexican Federal law enforcement-and his ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican officials involved in the criminal organization from 2003 to 2008. This study thus explores the role and influence of corrupt Mexican officials that allowed for a secure and efficient illegal trafficking of drugs inside Mexico and into the United States, as well. To find the connections and create a social network analysis (SNA) in the analytical program, UCINET,[1] various sources of data such as court documents were utilized. The information was obtained through official US court documents such as indictments, official testimonies, and hearing transcripts. Researchers aiming at applying SNA in a criminological context can be confident about data collected from different kinds of court records especially when the focus of the research is on individuals in terms of their position within the criminal group.[2] The findings from the information and the network showed that the actors with the highest betweenness centrality were also the leaders of their respective organizations. The findings also demonstrated in a two-faction analysis that many individuals working for the Mexican government were in the faction pertaining to the Sinaloa Cartel and vice versa suggesting an objective high level of interconnectivity between government officials and drug traffickers. These results suggest the involvement and role of corrupt officials inside organized crime is crucial to facilitate the goals of the criminal organizations, thus contributing to and supporting the existing literature on corruption and organized crime. It should be noted that, not all individuals found in this study are assumed to be guilty or have been proven so via conviction in a court of law. The presumption of innocence is an important concept that applies to the actors discussed here.

"When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the “war on drugs”: despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige.

In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the “patron saint” of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry."

Portugal and Czech Republic were chosen by the student to undertake a comparative analysis with respect to their drug policies due to their different (albeit not opposite) take on addressing the skyrocketing illegal drug use and drug trade. The data acquired from several studies shall only be limited from 1990s onwards, and the student shall strive to only use studies that employed methodologies common to both subjects of the comparative analysis for a more uniform and fairer analysis derived.  The study was limited due to time constraints and other limitations (prescribed word count, research interest, available resources) but the topic was particularly chosen due to the relevance of the issue in the Philippines.

« Le 10 mai 2001, ils m’ont transféré en avion militaire à la nouvelle prison de Valledupar. On savait bien que là-bas c’était le régime yankee. Ils m’ont tout pris, ils m’ont donné un uniforme […] et ils m’ont rasé la tête. Les gardiens étaient très jeunes, ils nous ont traités de façon totalement inhumaine. On n’avait jamais connu ça auparavant […]. Rapidement, les détenus ont lancé un mouvement de protestation, au sujet du droit de visite. La réponse a été brutale. Une répression à feu et à sang, à coups de matraque et de gaz lacrymogène. »
Le témoignage de ce prisonnier reflète le virage opéré au sein du système carcéral colombien suite à une réforme inspirée par le modèle de prison de sécurité maximale américain. Réalisées dans le cadre des accords du « Plan Colombie » – le vaste programme anti-drogue et antiguérilla de Washington dans ce pays – les
transformations du système carcéral colombien sont révélatrices de la manière dont le « tournant punitif » initié aux États-Unis s’exporte au niveau international.
Cet ouvrage repose sur un riche matériel ethnographique, recueilli au cours d’une enquête de terrain en Colombie et aux États-Unis. L’étude est basée sur des observations dans les prisons colombiennes et sur des interviews approfondies avec des prisonniers, des membres de leurs familles, des gardiens, des représentants des autorités carcérales, des activistes des droits humains, ainsi que des architectes et entrepreneurs de l’industrie carcérale américaine. Les nouvelles prisons colombiennes y sont décrites comme un espace de dépossession et de contrôle sans précédent, mais également comme un lieu de résistances multiformes de la part de la communauté des prisonniers.

Jennifer Goett's ethnography examines the race and gender politics of activism for autonomous rights in an Afrodescedant Creole community in Nicaragua. Weaving together fifteen years of research, Black Autonomy follows this community-based movement from its inception in the late 1990s to its realization as an autonomous territory in 2009 and beyond. Goett argues that despite significant gains in multicultural recognition, Afro-Nicaraguan Creoles continue to grapple with the day-to-day violence of capitalist intensification, racialized policing, and drug war militarization in their territories. Activists have responded by adopting a politics of autonomy based on race pride, territoriality, self-determination, and self-defense. Black Autonomy shows how this political radicalism is rooted in African diasporic identification and gendered cultural practices that women and men use to assert control over their bodies, labor, and spaces in an atmosphere of violence.

This essay addresses the anti-drug policy of the current Colombian government chaired by Iván Duque Márquez, who has reissued the postulates and purposes of the classic prohibitionist model of zero tolerance and war on drugs; in contrast to the position of the previous government chaired by Juan Manuel Santos regarding the issue of illegal substances, critical of the prohibitionist model and favorable to a change in strategy to address the problem.

From alcohol to LSD, Łukasz Kamieński takes readers on a unique 300-page journey through the history of warfare as seen through the prism of drug use. Beginning with the Greek city-states and ending with the contemporary consumption in the American Armed Forces, the text overflows with witty anecdotes, eloquent prose, and heart-wrenching realities found on drug-fueled battlefields. Drawing on literature, unclassified military and pharmaceutical studies, and private accounts of soldiers, Shooting Up is brilliant work that needs to find itself on every political science and history undergraduate reading list.

The supposed inalienability and universality of human rights notwithstanding, it is clear that, where Duterte's War on Drugs is concerned, the category of humanity is selectively applied; one source of legitimation for what has been called "the democide of the poor," for instance, is the notion that those who commit crimes are less than human, that their lives are worth only the prize for their elimination. But how is the worth of a life determined, and what could account for why certain populations are allowed to remain in conditions of suffering, to die or to be killed? How is public consent produced and maintained for what seems to be morally, legally, and rationally untenable? My research inquires into popular narratives that have legitimized and normalized the culture of killing suspected criminals without due process, and locates these narratives within critical discourses on normalized violence and the neoliberal state. I aim to understand, at a theoretical-systematic level, the war on drugs and the responses it has elicited from publics within the interface of structural, symbolic, and everyday violence that conditions precarious subjects under neoliberal governmentality. Using conceptual taxonomies of violence by Galtung (1969), Bourgois (2001), and Žižek (2009), my paper seeks to surface the role of invisible modalities of indirect violence in constituting and normalizing conditions in which inflicting direct, spectacular violence upon certain categories of people becomes socially acceptable. Connecting this to Lorey's (2015) exposition of the three dimensions of the precarious under the neoliberal state, I also argue that the extraordinary violence of the drug war is enacted as an illusion of state power to allay the anxieties that arise from generalized insecurity amid the harms visited by unregulated market forces and the state's inability to deliver political goods to its citizens, which produce a crisis of legitimacy.

Es un libro que interroga los daños de las políticas prohibicionistas en materia de drogas y los daños ocasionados por las leyes de drogas en America latina en general y en Argentina en particular. Esta compilación del Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Drogadependencias y SIDA CEADS apuesta a abrir y fundamentar un debate tan necesario como relegado en la región sobre la legalización de las drogas y la despenalización de su tenencia.

La violencia contemporánea se comporta como un atractor extraño. En la física cuántica, los atractores son puntos o conjuntos que forman parte de los sistemas dinámicos. Los estados de los atractores evolucionan en el tiempo y hacia estos estados tiende a evolucionar un sistema. Se llaman atractores extraños porque exhiben comportamientos caóticos, comportamientos que se disparan en todas direcciones y se caracterizan por ser impredecibles.

Puerto Rico exhibe más un estado de violencia que un problema de violencia en el sentido tradicional y criminológico de la palabra.  Este estado de violencia se expresa en el combinatorio de sujeciones políticas y penuria económica, un estado de excepción dentro de otro, la crisis económica y la deuda. Además, incluye modalidades de la violencia; notablemente la violencia de género y la violencia del narcotráfico.

Estas modalidades tienen dimensiones sistémicas y el operar de estos sistemas en el tiempo constituye igualmente un estado de violencia.

Este libro atiende estas dos contenciones centrales.

Libro-impreso /
ebook:

RESUMO: O presente artigo busca explanar as origens da criminalização, através da correlação da política criminais de dois países, de um dos vetores que mais envolve o aparato de segurança pública, internacional e policial do último século: as drogas. Sejam naturais ou sintéticas, com incentivo de uso ou penalização com a morte, as drogas vêm de uma longa tradição de controvérsias, seja no Brasil ou no mundo. Mas, um país em especial, irá influenciar a política brasileira de drogas a partir do século XX, os Estados Unidos. A exportação da política de drogas norte-americana ao Brasil não irá ter a mesma aplicabilidade quanto ao público, mas terá o mesmo resultado, a segregação baseada em políticas higienistas de cor e raça.
Palavras-Chave: Política nacional de drogas; Lei de Drogas; Guerra às Drogas.

ABSTRACT: The present article seeks to explain the origins of criminalization, through the correlation of the criminal policies of two countries, of one of the vectors that most involve the public security, international and police apparatus of the last century: drugs. Whether natural or synthetic, with an incentive to use or penalize to death, drugs come from a long tradition of controversy, whether in Brazil or in the world. But, a particular country, will influence Brazilian drug policy from the twentieth century, the United States. The export of US drug policy to Brazil will not have the same applicability as the public, but will have the same result, segregation based on hygienist policies of color and race.

Keywords: National drug policy; Drugs’ Laws; War on Drugs.

More Than 10 years ago Dr. Ernest Drucker wrote that “The current model of drug control relies primarily on law enforcement to seize drugs and imprison drug offenders. While these efforts have produced large numbers of arrests, incarcerations and seizures, drug overdose deaths have increased 540% since 1980 and drug-related problems have worsened.” This research paper will discuss the “Balloon Effect” as one of, if not the primary, reasons why supply side strategies have not decreased the availability and or use of illegal drugs. “The Balloon Effect” is an economic term that describes what happens when, given a fairly elastic supply function, temporary supply reductions lead to higher prices which in term stimulates greater supply production. In Part I, this paper reviews government attempts to reduce supplies of a wide range of different types of illegal drugs over the last 50 years in an attempt to ascertain if there is any evidence that supply reduction strategies have ever been successful. In Part II it examines misconceptions about drugs and harm reduction strategies, decriminalization and or legalization as more viable options going forward. The paper concludes in Part III with some suggestions and recommendations for a more effective national and international drug control strategy.

Grabbing Power outlines the history of agribusiness in Northern Honduras—from the United Fruit Company’s dominance in the 20th century to the rise of a powerful class of domestic elites in the 1980s and 90s including the brutal landowner Miguel Facussé, also known as the “oil palm grower of death.” The power of these elites is bolstered by international aid, “green” capitalism, a corrupt media, and US-funded militarization in the name of a tragic War on Drugs.