The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

"This is a rare book, in the sense that it’s a book written for a popular audience that also makes real academic scholarly contributions. It’s a very readable book written in a very approachable style. At the same time, it is probably the best scholarly study that we have of the history of Mexican drug trafficking. That’s right. It tells the story of Mexican drug trafficking and also of drug farming. Cultivating marijuana and heroin poppies has been an attractive option for many Mexican peasants because even though it became criminalised early in the 20th century, from the point of view of the drug trafficker and the producer of the drug, it’s a victimless crime. The drugs might of course mess up lives elsewhere—in the case of heroin, it surely has the power to mess up lives—but as the producer you don’t see any of that, and so you’re not doing anything that necessarily feels that wrong. This has changed recently, but for the longest time Mexico was a drug-producing but not a drug-consuming country. There’s been some bohemian underground culture of heroin consumption and pot smoking etc., but far less than in the United States. These drugs were produced for the longest time for an international market, especially the North American market. “It’s a book written for a popular audience that also makes real academic scholarly contributions” And the people profiting from the drug production were not only the traffickers and the producers themselves, but it was also the state, and people in positions of authority. This was an activity that early on was protected and run as a racket by state agencies and police forces, parts of the army, and by the governors of some of these states that first became significant centres of drug production. What has happened in Mexico more recently—in the last three or four decades—is that for various reasons the state and state agencies have ceded control of the production and trafficking of drugs. That job has been taken up by criminal groups. With these criminal groups, we have far less of a sense of who’s in control. There’s much more infighting among those who want to control and tax and profiteer off drug production and trafficking in certain locations or along certain routes—and that’s why it has become far more violent than it used to be."