Drug trafficking and consumption are among the most pressing global issues of our time and the approaches to alleviating them are myriad and complex. With Drugs and the World,Axel Klein takes a remarkably broad approach to the issue, exploring the importance of psychoactive substances to our health and culture. To be properly understood, drugs should not be simply examined from a negative point of view, Klein argues. From their centrality in religious rituals to their part in the growth of trade among nation-states, Klein reveals the pivotal role that drugs have played in the advancement of human society. Klein then investigates the modern policies that define certain substances as drugs; the link between drugs, addiction, and crime; and the legal strategies and policies around the world that have largely failed to control global drug trafficking. The book also draws upon studies from the Caribbean, West Africa and Eastern Europe to propose solutions that could reinforce the eroded power of state institutions, law enforcement, and the democratic process in addressing drug trafficking. A timely and in-depth analysis, Drugs and the World offers an expertly written examination that will be essential for all those concerned with the role of drugs in the modern world.

The 2019 World Drug Report will include an updated overview of recent trends on production, trafficking and consumption of key illicit drugs. The Report contains a global overview of the baseline data and estimates on drug demand and supply and provides the reference point for information on the drug situation worldwide.

What drives the drug trade, and how has it come to be what it is today? A global history of the acquisition of progressively more potent means of altering ordinary waking consciousness, this book is the first to provide the big picture of the discovery, interchange, and exploitation of the planet’s psychoactive resources, from tea and kola to opiates and amphetamines.

While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs? In Drugs and Drug Policy, three noted authorities survey the subject with exceptional clarity, in this addition to the acclaimed series, What Everyone Needs to Know®. They begin, by defining "drugs," examining how they work in the brain, discussing the nature of addiction, and exploring the damage they do to users. The book moves on to policy, answering questions about legalization, the role of criminal prohibitions, and the relative legal tolerance for alcohol and tobacco. The authors then dissect the illicit trade, from street dealers to the flow of money to the effect of catching kingpins, and show the precise nature of the relationship between drugs and crime. They examine treatment, both its effectiveness and the role of public policy, and discuss the beneficial effects of some abusable substances. Finally they move outward to look at the role of drugs in our foreign policy, their relationship to terrorism, and the ugly politics that surround the issue. Crisp, clear, and comprehensive, this is a handy and up-to-date overview of one of the most pressing topics in today's world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

“The stories are skillfully told and entirely entertaining . . . An expert, mostly feel-good book about modern medicine” from the award-winning author (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine. Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book. “[An] absorbing new book.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] well-written and engaging chronicle.” —The Wall Street Journal “Lucidly informative and compulsively readable.” —Publishers Weekly “Entertaining [and] insightful.” —Booklist “Well-written, well-researched and fascinating to read Ten Drugs provides an insightful look at how drugs have shaped modern medical practices. Towards the end of the book Hager writes that he ‘came away surprised by some of the things he had learned.’ I had the very same reaction.” —Penny Le Couteur, coauthor of Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

Introduction: How drugs made war and war made drugs -- Drunk on the front -- Where there's smoke there's war -- Caffeinated conflict -- Opium, empire, and Geopolitics -- Speed warfare -- Cocaine wars -- Conclusion: The drugged battlefields of the 21st century .

More than a hundred years have passed since the adoption of the first prohibitionist laws on drugs. Increasingly, the edifice of international drug control and laws is vacillating under pressures of reform. Scholarship on drugs history and policy has had a tendency to look at the issue mostly in the Western hemisphere of the globe or to privilege Western narratives of drugs and drugs policy. This volume instead turns this approach upside down and makes an intellectual attempt to redefine the subject of drugs in the Global South. Opium, heroin, cannabis, hashish, methamphetamines and khat are among the drugs discussed in the contributions to the volume, which spans from Sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, including the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and the Indian Subcontinent. The volume also makes a powerful case for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of drugs by juxtaposing the work of historians, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists and criminologists. Ultimately, this edited volume is a rich and diverse collection of new case studies, which opens up venues for further research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Fifty years of the War on Drugs has led to millions of deaths, displacements, and incarcerations. Disproportionately enacted on oppressed races, international drug prohibition has reinforced the color line across the globe. This collection reveals the racist impact of the war on drugs across multiple continents and in numerous situations, from racialized drug policing at festivals in the United Kingdom to the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico, and from the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel to the management of black bodies in Brazil. Pushing forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and calling for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, this collection proves that the problem of drugs and race is an international, and intentional, disaster.

The 2016 UNGASS on drug policy resulted in an Outcome Document detailing profound differences of opinion and practice between different states polarising public health and human rights themes. This book examines the different positions, the underlying problems, and the options open for the next international gathering on drugs.