The Long War on Drugs

“The Long War on Drugs makes diplomatic history, the interaction between US domestic and regional drug policies, and social and cultural history work together to show how the present has been produced by the past. In beautiful prose, Anne L. Foster explains the diplomatic history of global prohibition and the various national interests it has supposedly served over time. Foster does a great job of bringing the current situation into view.” - Nancy D. Campbell, author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose

“A smart, compelling, and accessible soup-to-nuts narrative history of US drug wars at home and abroad. It’s a terrific survey for newcomers that also advances the field with fresh insights and synthesis.” - David Herzberg, author of White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America

"A strength of the book is Foster’s analysis of the influence of racist and colonialist beliefs on the choice of which drugs and forms of drugs (eg, crack vs crystalline cocaine) would be banned or heavily penalized. Another aspect to which she devotes a valuable chapter is the environmental damage (eg, deforestation, toxic byproducts) done by criminals attempting to evade detection and by governments attempting to eradicate crops (eg, defoliants such as agent orange, paraquat, and glyphosate). This topic receives relatively little attention in discussions about drug policy and perhaps should receive more as we begin to see the adverse health effects of these environmental impacts more clearly." - Paul Lazar, Family Medicine

“The book is a welcome contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the intertwined history of legal and illegal drugs. . . . Close attention to the international origins and contexts of the U.S.-led war on drugs is among the book’s foremost strengths, as is Foster’s comparative analysis of the fluid and racially/politically constructed boundaries between medicinal and recreational use of narcotics and other controlled substances.”

"Foster makes an important historical contribution to the vast body of scholarly research that demonstrates that the lengthy war on drugs has failed." - G. B. Osborne, Choice

"The Long War on Drugs is a fascinating story of how U.S. drug policy became global and why, despite its limitations, it has remained fundamentally unchanged for more than a century." - María-Celia Toro, Journal of American History