drugs 
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/24/2023
The Real Story Behind "Cocaine Bear"
The real story of "Pablo Escobear" involves far less action by the bear and much more by a ring of smugglers during the cocaine boom of the 1980s.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
10/25/2022
Problems with Legal Marijuana will Demand Coherent Policy Response
by Peter Thilly
The state-by-state variation in marijuana laws means that legalization has the potential to create inequalities and subject some users to state violence. The history of opium in China shows the need for coherent overarching policies.
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SOURCE: Teen Vogue
8/11/2022
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.
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SOURCE: Grand Forks Herald
12/4/2021
New Book Questions Value of Established Treatment Methods in Age of Fentanyl
Amy C. Sullivan tells the history of the "Minnesota Model" of inpatient treatment followed by sponsorship and 12-step recovery, but says the model isn't working for the opioid epidemic and a pragmatic "harm reduction" approach is needed.
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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.
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SOURCE: WNYC
7/28/2021
Fifty Years Since the War on Drugs
"This summer marks 50 years since the war on drugs began under President Richard Nixon. But the opioid overdose epidemic continues to ravage the country, and incarceration—especially of Black people—has skyrocketed over the past 5 decades."
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SOURCE: Newsday
7/7/2021
Prof. David Courtwright Recounts History of Opioid Epidemics in Trial against Makers, Distributors
A historian of past drug epidemics and narcotics regulation is an expert witness for New York State in a case against opioid manufacturers, who relaxed the regulatory standards put up in response to opioid addiction in the 19th century.
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SOURCE: NPR
10/8/2020
Throughline: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (audio)
Billie Holliday's legal problems over drugs were made more difficult by her refusal to stop performing the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit."
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: Contingent Magazine
1/13/20
History and the Opioid Crisis
by Jeremy Milloy
In the 1970s, just as now, people living with and recovering from substance use disorders faced prejudice and mistreatment at the hiring stage and in the workplace itself.
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SOURCE: Time
1/7/20
How Methamphetamine Became a Key Part of Nazi Military Strategy
by Peter Andreas
As Norman Ohler shows in Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, while other drugs were banned or discouraged, methamphetamine was touted as a miracle product when it appeared on the market in the late 1930s.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
11/18/2019
Why abruptly abandoning the drug war is a bad idea for Mexico
by Aileen Teague
Long-term economic initiatives are good, but a power vacuum will make things more violent in the short term.
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SOURCE: Nursing Clio
6/18/19
The Opioid Epidemic as Metaphor
by Faith Bennett
As cinematic portrayals of opioid use and abuse tend to be this sensational, commonplace opioid usage almost feels as if it doesn’t fit into this pattern of addiction at all.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/16/19
The return of ‘reefer madness’
by Emily Dufton and Lucas Richert
Both supporters and opponents of legalization are quick to use sensationalism to prove their points, stunting the pursuit of real research needed to determine cannabis’ social effects.
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SOURCE: National Security Archive
5/25/18
Colombia's former president linked to Medellín drug cartel
A Colombian senator told the U.S. Embassy in 1993 that the founders of the Medellín drug cartel “financed” the election campaign of then-senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, according to documents posted by the National Security Archive.
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6/3/18
The Opioid Addiction Epidemic Is an 8 on the Richter Scale
by David T. Courtwright
Here’s how we got here and why this historian is guardedly optimistic.
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5-5-16
Why Have Military Historians Ignored Drug Use in the Military?
by Lukasz Kamienski
It’s a serious oversight, and there are disturbing reasons for it.
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Obama's Lost War on Drugs
by Jeremy Kuzmarov
Rather than relying on our hopeless forty-fourth president and an even more hopeless Republican-controlled Congress, citizen groups need to mobilize together to oppose the waste of their hard earned taxpayer dollars in the War on Drugs.
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SOURCE: LA Music Blog
5-20-13
Rock music historians debunk myths about Rolling Stones
Many stories and figures have emerged from the hazy shroud of the genre-defining, five-decades-long sex-, drugs-, and rock n’ roll-fueled bender of The Rolling Stones. God knows some of the stories are exaggerated, while others are even more outrageous than we know.In celebration of The Stones’ 50th anniversary, broadcaster and music historian Pete Fornatale endeavored to get to the bottom of many of the stories surrounding The Rolling Stones’ members and catalog. He passed away in 2012 shortly before the release of his book, 50 Licks: Myths and Stories from Half a Century of the Rolling Stones, earlier this year, but I recently spoke with his two co-authors: son Peter Thomas Fornatale and broadcaster Bernie Corbett....
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