The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

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The first book to prove CIA and U.S. government complicity in global drug trafficking, The Politics of Heroin includes meticulous documentation of dishonesty and dirty dealings at the highest levels from the Cold War until today. Maintaining a global perspective, this groundbreaking study details the mechanics of drug trafficking in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central America. New chapters detail U.S. involvement in the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the ...
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Overview

The first book to prove CIA and U.S. government complicity in global drug trafficking, The Politics of Heroin includes meticulous documentation of dishonesty and dirty dealings at the highest levels from the Cold War until today. Maintaining a global perspective, this groundbreaking study details the mechanics of drug trafficking in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central America. New chapters detail U.S. involvement in the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the Taliban, and how U.S. drug policy in Central America and Colombia has increased the global supply of illicit drugs.

Author Biography: Alfred W. McCoy is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a doctorate in southeast Asian history from Yale University and is the recipient of the 2001 Goodman Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Nearly 20 years ago, McCoy wrote The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia , which stirred up considerable controversy, alleging that the CIA was intimately involved in the Vietnamese opium trade. In the current volume, a substantially updated and longer work, he argues that the situation basically hasn't changed over the past two decades; however the numbers have gotten bigger. McCoy writes, ``Although the drug pandemic of the 1980s had complex causes, the growth in global heroin supply could be traced in large part to two key aspects of U.S. policy: the failure of the DEA's interdiction efforts and the CIA's covert operations.'' He readily admits that the CIA's role in the heroin trade was an ``inadvertent'' byproduct of ``its cold war tactics,'' but he limns convincingly the path by which the agency and its forebears helped Corsican and Sicilian mobsters reestablish the heroin trade after WW II and, most recently, ``transformed southern Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin.'' Scrupulously documented, almost numbingly so at times, this is a valuable corrective to the misinformation being peddled by anti-drug zealots on both sides of the aisle. First serial to the Progressive. (July)
Library Journal
It seems that the American government has learned nothing from its war on drugs. In 1972, the CIA attempted to suppress McCoy's classic work, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia ( LJ 11/15/72 ) , which charged CIA complicity in the narcotics trade as part of its cold war tactics. Now, this revised and expanded edition, incorporating 20 years of research, discusses in almost overwhelming detail how U.S. drug policies and actions in the Third World has created ``America's heroin plague.'' McCoy notes that every attempt at interdiction has only resulted in the expansion of both the production and consumption of drugs. He also charges that 40 years of CIA protection of Asian drug traffickers and active participation in the transport of opium and heroin has undermined U.S. anti-drug efforts. A massive work that raises serious questions. For larger public and academic libraries.-- Wilda Williams, ``Library Journal''
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781556521263
  • Publisher: Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 6/1/1991
  • Edition description: 1st ed
  • Pages: 654

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  • Posted January 20, 2009

    The Poltics of the CIA

    I have just read the greatest book on American foreign policy. I say that usually with great reservations as their are many great foreign policy shows I have read, but this one makes the other ones pale in comparison as it shows the dirty backstabbing of the CIA, the Corsicans, Chi Chau syndicates and Taiwanese proxy armies. It is amazing the agendas that come around the epochal history of opium and its sister, heroin, the two most influential drugs in history. They destroyed the lives of so many Indochinese tribes as they vied for the trade and the arms of the CIA or the sneaky KTG, who was a proxy army of Thailand. It was a wonderful book of the darker side of American normalcy.

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