Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley

to these substances, so vital in the creation and maintenance of empire, to which our minds turn when we hear of drugs, and especially not in the context of a war against them.
    Instead, within the state framework of the drug war, the public is made to fear the by-products of what Cartwright calls the little three: opium, cannabis, and coca. Each of these substances was used for a long time by Indigenous peoples around the world. Opium was used for curing illness in Europe and North Africa before Arab traders introduced it to China more than two millennia ago. Marijuana, a hearty crop that produced not only cannabis but also strong hemp fiber, was long used in India and Asia. Indigenous folks throughout the Andean region ingested coca leaf to quell hunger and boost energy and strength.
    Coca, opium, and cannabis have, to different extents, played key roles in state and elite formation, like their licit cousins. In the Andean highlands, Spanish colonizers commercialized coca plantations in order for mine workers to have access to the stimulant.[32] The opium wars in China were key to British colonialism, and English and American colonialists defended their right to make money off the trade. “I do not pretend to justify the prosecution of the opium trade in a moral and philanthropic point of view, but as a merchant I insist that it has been a fair, honorable and legitimate trade; and to say the worst of it, liable to no further or weightier objections than is the importation of wines, Brandies & spirits in to the U. States, England, &c,” wrote Warren Delano II, who was the grandfather of FDR, and whose firm, Russell and Company, had a stake in the opium trade (smuggling opium into China) in the nineteenth century.[33]
    The role of governments and particularly the US government in determining what constitutes illicit markets and illegal drugs is a crucial element of their war on drugs. “States monopolize the power to criminalize: laws precede and define criminality. Through their law-making and law-enforcing authority, states set the rules of the game even if they cannot entirely control the play,” writes scholar Peter Andres.[34] The ease with which substances can be prohibited by a state is the ease with which they can be made legal as well, a point not lost on drug policy reformers or students of history. “For instance, alcohol smuggling networks linking the United States to suppliers in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean created a formidable policing challenge during the Prohibition Era—and were eliminated with the stroke of a pen with the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933.”[35]
    It is also important to keep in mind the historical context of narcotics cultivation itself, as this too has been determined to a great extent by North American and European interests. The isolation of morphine, heroin, and codeine from opium was achieved by European chemists in the nineteenth century, and commercialized by pharmaceutical companies that still exist today. The first cocaine labs to transform coca leaves into concentrate were set up by German scientists, the process invented to prevent the leaves from rotting in transport to colonial centers. The US and German governments both played integral roles, together with the government of Peru, in the promotion of coca and cocaine exports. “In the 1890s, US commercial attachés in Lima honed contacts with local cocaine makers.… And helped Peruvians to upgrade their shipping and leaf-drying techniques.”[36] By 1902, 2,400 kilos of cocaine were produced in the Andean region, and Merck, a German pharmaceutical company, controlled a quarter of the market.[37] Around that same time, an estimated 600–1,000 tons of coca was being imported into the United States, mostly for use as an ingredient in Coca-Cola.[38] It was Bayer that first marketed heroin as a cough suppressant, and later, Smith, Kline & French of Philadelphia promoted amphetamines for the treatment of the