» Traffick Jam

Traffick Jam

Tracking how drugs and war come together in U.S. policy toward South America, Traffick Jam focuses on the larger forces of capitalism and militarization that influence foreign policy, shape public political debate, and define the boundaries of the “legal” drug economy. This blog is premised on the idea that the United States has never waged a War on Drugs; on the contrary, control over the drug trade is a powerful weapon that the U.S. government flexibly deploys to wage war.

July 14, 2011

The struggle over the reach of international drug control continues. Having failed in an earlier attempt to amend the primary international drug control treaty to protect traditional uses of the coca leaf by indigenous communities in the Andes, Bolivia has declared it will withdraw from the treaty so that it can rejoin to it with reservations. This attempt to expand the circle of people who can legitimately make use of coca leaves—and the hostile reaction to it—provides insight into the economic and political interests that dictate the terms of drug control.

June 30, 2011

Dr. Gordon Rohlehr explains that any meaningful definition of community must take into account those whose struggles and humanity often fall below the collective radar, people who live ‘beneath the underdog’. The lesson he offers should be kept in mind when this Friday prisoners caged in California's supermax prison at Pelican Bay launch a hunger strike to protest the inhumane policies that prevail in the U.S. prison system.

June 23, 2011

Over the last decade the Caribbean has become one of the major trafficking routes for drugs leaving South America destined for the United States and other consumer markets. The twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago (T & T), a place I am currently visiting for the first time, presents a sobering case study on the failures of the punitive approach to drug control advocated and funded by the United States.

 

June 16, 2011

The ads that appeared in Drug Trade News, a pharmaceutical industry publication that existed from the 1920s through the 1970s, are striking today for their tone, tenor, racism, or maybe what could be described as devastating privilege. They reflect a U.S. drug industry that confidently presumed its dominant role in the global capitalist market in the 1960s, even as the world was rocked by popular rebellions.

June 08, 2011
June 02, 2011
May 26, 2011
May 12, 2011