War on Drugs

The End of the War on Drugs: Petro’s Key Foreign Policy Agenda

by

The initiatives and rhetoric of the first five months of Gustavo Petro’s government have clearly indicated that one of the key objectives of the Humane Colombia party is to redirect Colombia’s foreign policy away from the “North Star” doctrine (Respice Polum) and toward the Respice Similia doctrine, as defined by president Alfonso López Michelsen back in the 1970s when the Colombian government pursued an autonomous position toward the emerging U.S.-driven War on Drugs.[1] Petro’s move away from the dominant status quo parallels the initiative of López Michelsen, insisting, as Michelsen did, that the problem of narcotics trafficking must be tackled from the angle of consumption and demand and not production and supply.[2] 

The return to the short-lived sovereignty-based doctrine of four decades ago sheds light on the subordinate role defended by all other past governments, with the exception of Michelsen’s, as well as the willingness of the current government to redefine their relationship with the United States, the Western-dominated global market system, its multilateral institutions and power structures, and the ultimate pursuit of new partnerships, regionally and globally, in order to establish a foreign policy that will guarantee peace for Colombians while at the same time securing a more sustainable and self-sufficient regional economic development model.  Within this initiative, the redefinition of Colombia’s role in the War on Drugs has become a key agenda item and a key pillar of Petro’s foreign policy.  Without this policy shift the country and the world, says Petro, will not be able to achieve peace; this objective will not be reached “without social, economic, and environmental justice.”[3]

From his perspective, and the perspective of many Colombians, the War on Drugs must be terminated because it has only led to death, violence, human rights abuses, economic degradation, political corruption, and environmental catastrophes.  This policy, imposed on Colombians by foreign interests wanting to turn their back on their own internal social and health problem, has impeded the country from achieving peace and internal political stability.  Forty plus years of failed policy initiatives and billions of dollars wasted is all there is to show for this policy initiative.  The “irrational war against drugs” pushed by the United States “has failed.”[4]

Read more

If only the Propaganda Machine had Paid Attention to the Humanitarian Crisis Emanating from the War on Drugs

by

The violent impact of the American War on Drugs has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Colombians and the displacement of millions more that have either inundated the urban centers of the country or simply left the Colombia.  Nevertheless, the Western propaganda machine decided, close to fifty years ago, to ignore the humanitarian atrocity and the systemic violation of human rights of Colombians carried out by American foreign policy, opting instead to focus on the magical realism-like stories of Colombian capos and the Hollywood-like stories of “good guys vs. bad guys.”  Now, watching the coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, it is irritating to see how Western media is capable and powerful enough to socially construct one particular narrative for Ukraine and another one for Colombia, denying the agency to the victims of the atrocities generated by Western, and more particularly, US drug policy.

Read more

Methadone: An American Way of Thinking

by

In 1976, the East German government stole and repurposed for its own broadcasts a copy of Julia Reichert’s and James Klein’s documentary film, Methadone: An American Way of Dealing. The theft was clumsy, almost unabashedly so, in the way that GDR intrusions often could be. Reichert and Klein had submitted the film for consideration in the 19th annual Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, but it was rejected for having been delivered to the committee after the deadline. When the film print was returned to the directors, it obviously had been cut and only partially reassembled. The original reels on which it had left the U.S. were gone, replaced by film cores. The leaders (the length of cellulose attached to the beginning or end of a film to assist the projectionist) were in German, not English. To add insult to injury, the package arrived with an exorbitant bill for cash-on-delivery shipping. 

Read more

“I envision the methadone clinic as we now know it disappearing”: The promises and failures of methadone and LAAM

by

I’ve watched Methadone: An American Way of Dealing five times now. Each time, I’m taken aback by how skillfully directors Julia Reichert and James Klein present this moment—a period of peak tension in the addiction treatment community. By 1974, when the film was released, the early promises of methadone were butting up, often painfully, against the era’s difficult realities. Through interviews with patients at the Dayton, Ohio, Bureau of Drug Abuse clinic (BUDA) at the center of the film, Reichert and Klein make it clear that methadone, once hailed as the solution to the decade’s twin problems of addiction and crime, couldn’t overcome the era’s other issues: deindustrialization, Vietnam, and America’s trends toward atomization and its concomitant political right turn. 

Read more

The War on Drugs: From Book to Website

by
War on Drugs Project

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is from Dr. David Farber, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Modern U.S. History at the University of Kansas. He is the editor of the recently published, War on Drugs: A History (NYU Press, 2021).

Over the last 36-and-a-half years I have done what research-oriented history professors of my generation were supposed to do: I wrote books and published articles. What I did not do—until now—was produce a website. Defying the ageist canard about old dogs and new tricks—albeit admittedly in collaboration with my much younger colleagues Clark Terrill and Marjorie Galelli—I’m happy to report that the War on Drugs Project website is now live.

Read more

The Performative Aspect of Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines’ War on Drugs

by

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by guest blogger Katrina Pineda, a junior undergraduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) pursuing a degree in Science, Technology, and Society. She is the co-president of the Philippine American League, RPI’s cultural Filipino club. This post was submitted at the end of Filipino American History Month (October) and in time for Araw ng mga Patay—Day of the Dead in the Philippines—in remembrance of those who have died in President Duterte’s war on drugs.

"La Pieta" photo by Raffy Lerma
“La Pieta” photograph by Raffy Lerma: Jennilyn Olayres holds her partner Michael Siaron, 30, a pedicab driver who was shot and killed by unidentified anti-drug motorcycle riding vigilantes along Pasay Rotonda, EDSA on July 23, 2016. According to Olayres, Siaron was not a drug pusher.

Pusher ako. Wag tularan.

“I am a [drug] pusher.  Don’t do what I did.”

The crudely drawn message on a cardboard sign beside a man just killed in the street is posed as a warning to the living. The sign appeared next to the body of Michael Siaron, a 30-year-old pedicab driver killed by a vigilante group in 2016. A famous photo of his bereaved partner cradling his body echoes “The Pieta,” also known as “The Lamentation of Christ.”

Read more

Points Interview: “Detectives, Detectors, and Drug Sniffers: Institutionalizing the Drug Dog Before and After Counterinsurgency” with Justin Hubbard

by

Editor’s Note: This is the first Points interview with authors from the latest issue of ADHS’s journal Social History of Alcohol and Drugs (vol. 35, no. 1; Spring 2021), published by the University of Chicago Press. Today we feature Justin Hubbard, who holds a PhD in the history of medicine from Vanderbilt University. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and vicious pug. You can see his article here. Contact the University of Chicago Press to subscribe to the journal or request access to this article or any other article from SHAD’s history. 

Article Abstract

The popularity of drug-sniffing dogs since the 1970s rests on the contributions of a dying technological movement—counterinsurgency science. A comparison of two drug-sniffing dog programs—the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’s detective dog of the 1940s and 1950s, and the Department of Defense’s detector dog of the 1960s and 1970s—documents how federal agents failed to institutionalize drug-sniffing dogs, while Department of Defense researchers succeeded. The disparate outcomes of the two programs illustrate, first, the contingent institutional factors involved in adopting dogs for drug control, and second, the fragile institutional relationships supporting counterinsurgency science and new drug-control strategies after the Vietnam War.

Tell readers a little about yourself

I’m an independent scholar, trained as a medical historian, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The large chunk of my research has examined the social conditions of health and illness, the political economy of medical technologies, and health-maintenance and knowledge production as problems of governance. I’m currently transitioning from academic history to a career in strategic labor research. In the meantime, I volunteer at Philadelphia’s famous medical history museum, The Mütter, where I’ve created a learning module for some 600 human brain slices cast in plastic.

SHAD Interview Hubbard

Read more

Dropping the Facade

by

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Bob Beach. Beach is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Albany, SUNY.  

When I went to college (the first time), I left my home in Central New York to attend a Franciscan College near Albany, the state capital. With a scholarship in hand—and a career in the medical field on my horizon—I was confident in my ability to succeed in the classroom. Being away from home for the first time, however, forced me to confront a much bigger fear: negotiating a safe, healthy, and productive college social life. My biggest worries were alcohol and drugs.

Nancy Reagan
Nancy Reagan revealing. the inevitable consequences….

Fearful of parental reprisals, school sanctions, and, of course, a life of crime and addiction—all lessons that had been reiterated ad nauseum during the “Just Say No!” era, I had sworn off all substances during high school. But, facing college and the culture of college drinking made me rethink that approach. I decided that I was going to have to try alcohol at some point, and I didn’t want it to be my first week on campus. So, a week before my arrival, I had my first alcohol experience with a friend at a different college.

I really enjoyed myself.

Read more