Pills, Powder, and Smoke: inside the bloody war on drugs

by Antony Loewenstein

Overview

Like the never-ending war on terror, the drugs war is a multi-billion-dollar industry that won’t go down without a fight. Pills, Powder, and Smoke explains why.

The war on drugs has been official American policy since the 1970s, with the UK, Europe, and much of the world following suit. It is at best a failed policy, according to bestselling author Antony Loewenstein. Its direct results have included mass incarceration in the US, extreme violence in different parts of the world, the backing of dictatorships, and surging drug addiction globally. And now the Trump administration is unleashing diplomatic and military forces against any softening of the conflict.

Pills, Powder, and Smoke investigates the individuals, officials, activists, victims, DEA agents, and traffickers caught up in this deadly war. Travelling through the UK, the US, Australia, Honduras, the Philippines, and Guinea-Bissau, Loewenstein uncovers the secrets of the drug war, why it’s so hard to end, and who is really profiting from it.

In reporting on the frontlines across the globe — from the streets of London’s King’s Cross to the killing fields of Central America to major cocaine transit routes in West Africa — Loewenstein reveals how the war on drugs has become the most deadly war in modern times. Designed and inspired by Washington, its agenda has nothing to do with ending drug use or addiction, but is all about controlling markets, territories, and people. Instead, Loewenstein argues, the legalisation and regulation of all drugs would be a much more realistic and humane approach. The evidence presented in this book will persuade many readers that he’s right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925693768
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	08/21/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	446 KB

About the Author

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, bestselling author, filmmaker and co-founder of Declassified Australia. He’s written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and many others. His books include Pills, Powder and Smoke, Disaster Capitalism, and My Israel Question. His documentary films include Disaster Capitalism and the Al Jazeera English films West Africa’s Opioid Crisis and Under the Cover of Covid. He was based in East Jerusalem 2016–2020. His website is https://antonyloewenstein.com; Twitter https://twitter.com/antloewenstein

What People are Saying About This

Johann Hari

‘An epic and important book about the war on drugs across the world.’

Editorial Reviews

Many people assume that as the war on drugs has failed and because a few countries have liberated cannabis as a recreational drug as well as a medicine, the “drug problem” is solved. This new book powerfully demolishes any such complacency that might have developed in the west. Drug wars represent a major, ongoing world-wide disaster. This book is a must-read for anyone pursuing a rational policy debate about drugs.”
—Dr. David Nutt, author of Drugs without the Hot Air (UIT Press), and The Neurobiology of Addiction (OUP).

“Antony Loewenstein is an amazing journalist and this is an amazing book. Anyone who cares about the war on drugs—one of the biggest catastrophes in the world—should read this superb book right away.”
—Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections

“In this vivid, partisan piece of reportage, Australian journalist Loewenstein (Disaster Capitalism) depicts the catastrophic human consequences of the U.S.-led war on drugs and advocates for the legalization of all illicit substances. Loewenstein argues that America’s prohibitionist policy serves not to counter abuse or impede trafficking, but rather to create corrupt “narco states” that are complicit with the federal government’s foreign policy goals...Readers inclined to take a skeptical view of the drug war...will welcome Loewenstein’s advocacy.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A critique of the war on drugs, which, by the author’s account, is mostly a war on the poor and dispossessed…The author examines several fronts in a war fought by Western governments, especially the U.S., on harder drugs that “are consumed nightly in such major cities as London, Sydney, New York, and Paris”…A sometimes overwrought but pressing survey calling into question a war that would seem to benefit only its combatants.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Disaster Capitalism:

“Chilling study, based on careful and courageous reporting, and illuminated with perceptive analysis, helps us understand all too well the saying that man is a wolf to man.”
–Noam Chomsky

“A journey into a world of mutated economics and corrupt politics that we ignore at our peril.”
–John Pilger

“I am very grateful that Antony Loewenstein has brought his meticulous reporting to this subject, and the result is a keenly observed and timely investigation into rampant resource plunder, privatised detention centres, and an array of other forms of corporate rapacity on four continents. This book will serve as a potent weapon for shock resistors around the world.”
–Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

From the Publisher

2019-09-24
A critique of the war on drugs, which, by the author's account, is mostly a war on the poor and dispossessed.

Build a wall on the border with Mexico, says Donald Trump, and voilà: no more drugs. As Jerusalem-based Australian journalist Loewenstein (Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe, 2015, etc.) observes, that assertion flies in the face of reports from the government's own Drug Enforcement Agency that drugs predominantly enter the United States via airports and seaports, not via land. All the same, the Trump administration "has brought the drug war back with a vengeance, though it's arguably far less effective in convincing people than in the past." Indeed, Americans have embraced a hitherto unthinkable laissez-faire attitude in terms of cannabis, if not other drugs. The author examines several fronts in a war fought by Western governments, especially the U.S., on harder drugs that "are consumed nightly in such major cities as London, Sydney, New York, and Paris." A U.S.-sponsored coup in Honduras, argues Loewenstein, made the country more vulnerable to exploitation by the cartels while interdiction campaigns elsewhere have amounted to "a convenient justification to ostracize, demonize, imprison, ignore, or kill the most marginalized," for whom the drug trade is a means of simple subsistence. Loewenstein lays out a case that is provocative but broad: It is inarguable that Richard Nixon used the drug war as a proxy for suppressing protest on the part of youth and ethnic minorities, but it takes more evidence than the author provides to land the argument that the drug war is a front for "the US goal of finding reliable, if autocratic, partners to secure regions rich with valuable resources, including oil and gold."

A sometimes overwrought but pressing survey calling into question a war that would seem to benefit only its combatants.

Kirkus Reviews