Warriors on Drugs

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 examines the long-standing war on drugs, which has involved extraordinary levels of violence in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, the Philippines, and elsewhere—levels of violence that have at times surpassed those of “real” war. The chapter observes complex and often synergistic relationships between the dynamics of the drug trade itself and the criminalizing and militarized response to it. Moving between the “external” war in poorer countries and the war on drugs and crime in the principal instigating state (the United States), it shows how addictive the war system becomes once its costs can be successfully exported to those with little or no stake in it.