US Foreign Policy And The War on Drugs. By Cornelius Friesendorf (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, 230pp. 75.00)

Abstract

The only law drug producers and traffickers do not break is the law of supply and demand. This law, however, which may possess its own in-built guiding strength, is also shaped by external factors, including domestic or international initiatives and, in general, institutional coercion or lack of it. With the premise that cocaine and heroin processing have increased and that we now inhabit a global illicit drug market, Friesendorf looks at the coercive initiatives undertaken by the United States since the 1970s to try to explain how such initiatives have contributed to making the drug problem worse. The implicit question posed is, of course, whether US efforts are effective responses to the drug problem or, rather, they are among the causes of its exacerbation. The author holds the view that coercive drug policies may be harmful—a view that he attempts to substantiate through the examination of a specific effect of such policies, namely the displacement of drug production and trafficking. A related premise of this work is, therefore, that US international initiatives against illicit drugs have not reduced coca and poppy cultivation, but have merely ‘pushed the drug industry from one place to another’ (p. 2). Embedded in an International Relations and security studies perspective, this book focuses on the side effects of foreign policy through the study of three cases of drug industry displacement. The first case examined relates to the US efforts in the early 1970s to curtail heroin supply from Mediterranean locations such as Marseille and Corsica. Heroin produced in Turkey poured into North American cities thanks to the international expertise of traffickers constituting the notorious French Connection. When Nixon put pressure on Turkey and ultimately persuaded its government to ban poppy cultivation, he could hardly claim a definitive victory against heroin, whose production moved to Southeast Asia and Mexico. The proximity of the latter country and the established flow of people and goods between Mexico and the United States soon created a situation of near-monopoly for Mexican heroin in American cities.