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Update: Unfortunately, because of disruptions related to the coronavirus, this event has been canceled.
In recent years, there has been growing alarm over how drugs increasingly aid terrorists, insurgents, traffickers, and gangs around the world. While the news focuses on today’s conflicts, what these stories ignore is how drugs have influenced, fueled, or been spread by war not just over the last several decades, but for centuries.
Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs (Oxford University Press, January 2020) by Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation, reveals that the drugs-war nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been the biggest beneficiaries. Andreas’ recent book tells the story of war through the lens of six psychoactive drug: alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine.
Killer High highlights numerous examples of the inextricable link between drugs and war through history. The modern era has seen armed conflict become progressively more “drugged,” with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of these mind-altering substances—and new ones being developed in an effort to create “super-soldiers.”
Dialogues on Global Drug Policy is an event series hosted at The New School with the aim to broaden the conversation on global drug policies.
Peter Andreas is the John Hay professor of international studies at Brown University, where he holds a joint appointment between the department of political science and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
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