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Drug War



  • What "Crackhead" Really Meant in 1980s America

    by Donovan X. Ramsey

    The memories of politicians and police have been allowed to dominate our understanding of the emergence of crack cocaine in the 1980s. A new book seeks to elevate the voices of urban Black Americans and others who experienced it directly and still live with its effects.



  • Is Globalization Changing Mexico's Relationship to Death?

    by Humberto Beck

    Post-revolutionary Mexico embraced cultural commemorations of the dead—Diá de los Muertos—to help conceal the violence of the regime's rise. Now, that "traditional" culture is again being transformed by global cultural appropriation and the escalating violence of global drug trafficking.



  • "Rainbow Fentanyl" Just the Latest Halloween Moral Panic

    by Joel Best

    From razor blades to opioids, the author has researched every Halloween panic since the 1950s and found no evidence of any child being harmed by any of them. Today, politicians are feeding equally ludicrous narratives to keep people scared. 



  • Understanding Colombia's Truth Commission Report after 60 Years of Civil Conflict

    by Rachel Nolan

    Colombia's armed conflict between government forces, leftist rebels, and paramilitary death squads is the world's longest continuous conflict. The nation's massive Truth Commission report undermines decades of official government narrative about the apportionment of blame for atrocities. 



  • Another 90's Trend is Back: DARE

    by Rebecca Kavanagh

    The brainchild of LAPD Chief Darryl Gates, DARE wasn't good at steering kids away from drugs. But it was good at bringing police into schools and encouraging kids to report anyone using drugs to the cops. 



  • Broken Homes of the Drug War

    by David Helps

    Rather than a mistake or an isolated instance of excess, a notoriously brutal and destructive LAPD raid on an apartment complex in 1988 should be seen as part of a political attack on the city's Black poor, enabled by cultural stereotypes of families of color. 



  • How the Cold War Killed Cannabis as We Knew It

    When Henry Kissinger sought to assert American control of Caribbean bauxite ore reserves, he set off a political dirty war that poisoned the Jamaican interior and destroyed prominent strains of cannabis in the name of marijuana interdiction. 



  • 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. 



  • 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? 



  • 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. 



  • 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. 



  • 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.