*Revised March 21, 2020

History 201A/301A
The Global Drug Wars
Spring 2019-2020
4-5 Units
Monday/Wednesday 1:30PM - 2:50PM

Robert Crews
Department of History
History Corner 29
[email protected]
(650) 520-8245
Office Hours: By appointment.

This course explores the global history of political struggles over the
production, circulation, and consumption of illicit drugs from the early
modern period to the present. It surveys medical and social controversies
over intoxicants; the political economy of drug trafficking; the ethnic and
racial politics of policing and interdiction; cultures of drug use, addiction,
and treatment; the interplay of ‘narcostates,’ cartels, and international
organizations; the emergence of globalized networks of exchange,
regulation, prohibition, and incarceration; and the racialization of legislation
on drugs.

This course counts toward the “Social Inquiry” Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing
requirement.

Requirements and Grading:

 Undergraduate students enrolled in History 201A for 4-5 units will prepare a 10-
minute research presentation or a ten-page research paper on a topic chosen in
consultation with me.

o A 1-2 page research proposal will be due April 22.

o Recordings of presentations and papers are due June 10.

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Undergraduate students enrolled in History 301A for 5 units will have an

additional assignment: a 3-4 page policy brief addresssing the question, “How to
Win the War on Drugs?” In lieu of this brief, students may, in consultation with
me, submit a brief fictional piece or audio/visual text in response to this prompt.

 Graduate Students enrolled in History 301 for 5 units will write a 20-page paper
due June 10 on a topic chosen in consultation with me. Please submit a 1-2 page
proposal by April 15.

 Class participation via Canvas Zoom will count for 50% of the final grade.
Presentations/papers will count for the remaining 50%.

o Please note that I will adjust the class participation component in light of
remote learning considerations.

Reading the Drug Wars

When approaching our assigned readings and films for our discussion and
papers/presentations, we will read (and write) with the following questions in mind:
1) what is the author's central argument?
2) how does the author arrive at this analysis? (what kinds of sources and interpretive
frameworks does he/she/they rely upon?)
3) is the interpretation convincing - and how does it relate to other works we have
encountered in this course?
 Texts listed under “Supplementary Readings” are suggestions for further reading
but are not required.

Students with Documented Disabilities: Students who may need an academic

accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the
Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with
required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an
Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is
being made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is
needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk
(phone: 723-1066, http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae).

 Electronic editions of the following texts are available for purchase; these are the
only required course readings that are currently not available online via Stanford
University Libraries:

Chris McGreal, American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts (2018)

Carl L. Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-discovery that Challenges

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Everything You Know about Drugs and Society (2013)

April 6 - Introduction

April 8 - The Psychoactive Revolution

David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
(2002), 1-66.

April 13 – Prohibition and Modernity

Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 69-207.

April 15 – The Opium Wars

Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain,
and Japan, 1839-1952 (2000), introduction, chpt. 8.

April 20 – The Pitfalls of Prohibition

Alfred McCoy, “The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics
Trade” in Michael K. Steinberg, Joseph J. Hobbs, and Kent Mathewson, eds., Dangerous
Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes (2004), 24-33,
39-55, 85-97.

April 22 – Commies and Crack - *Proposals Due

“The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations,” National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 2

Freeway: Crack in the System (2015) [1 hr., 43 mins.]

April 27 – Addiction, Politics, Culture

A New Approach - Iran (2006) [9 mins.]

Kate Dolan, Shabnam Salimi, Bijan Nassirimanesh, Setareh Mohsenifar, and Azarakhsh
Mokri, “The Establishment of a Methadone Treatment Clinic for Women in Tehran,
Iran,” Journal of Public Health Policy 32, no. 2 (2011): 219-30.
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Afghanistan’s Secret Heroin Epidemic (2014) [45 mins.]

May 4 – Drugs, Racial Politics, and Citizenship

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness (2012), 1-19, 40-139.

The House I Live In (2012) [1 hr., 50 mins.]

May 6 – Recovering from the Past

Angela Garcia, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande
(2010), 1-36, 111-149.

May 11 – Alternatives?

Carl L. Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-discovery that Challenges

Everything You Know about Drugs and Society (2013), xi-19, 238-332.

May 13 – The Endless Frontier?

Emmanuel Akyeampong, “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking in West Africa: A Case Study
of Ghana,” African Affairs 104, no. 416 (2005): 429-47.

David Mansfield, “Turning Deserts into Flowers: Settlement and Poppy Cultivation in
Southwest Afghanistan,” Third World Quarterly, 39, no. 2 (2018) 331-349.

“Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation,” Science 343 (31 January

2014): 489-490.

May 20 – ‘Mexican’ Drug Wars?

Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace, A Narco History: How the United States and
Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War” (2016)

May 25 – Narco-Cultures

Shaylih Muehlmann, When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the US-Mexico

Borderlands (2014)
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May 27 – Living the War

María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba, “Mirrors, Ghosts and Violence in Ciudad Juárez,”
and José Skinner, “The Sicario in the Salon,” in Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso, eds.,
Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-violence (2013)

Miguel A. Cabañas, “Introduction: Imagined Narcoscapes: Narcoculture and the Politics

of Representation,” Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 2 (2014): 3-17.

Howard Campbell, “Narco-Propaganda in the Mexican "Drug War": An Anthropological

Perspective,” Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 2 (2014): 60-77..

Julien Mercille, “The Media-Entertainment Industry and the "War on Drugs" in

Mexico,” Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 2 (2014): 110-29.

June 1 – Aesthetics, Politics, Change

Birds of Passage (2018) [2 hrs, 6 mins.]

June 3 – Capitalism and Crisis

Chris McGreal, American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts (2018)

June 10 - Final video presentations or papers (due as a Microsoft Word File)

updated to Canvas

Supplementary Reading

Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,
Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Colombia 2nd rev ed. (2003)

Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (2011)

Ryan Gingeras, Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey (2014), 1-
18, 239-270.

Jonathan Marshall, The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the
International Drug Traffic (2012), 1-32, 163-173.
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Paul Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (2008)

Lukasz Kamienski, Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War (2016)

Ioan Grillo, Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and The New Politics of
Latin America (2016)

Roberto Saviano, Zero Zero Zero: Look at Cocaine and All You See Is Powder. Look
Through Cocaine and You See the World, trans. Virginia Jewiss (2015)

Isaac Campos, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs
(2012)

Ana Guadalupe Valenzuela Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan, ¡Tequila! A Natural and
Cultural History (2003)

Mark Cameron Edberg, El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos and the Construction of a

Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border (2004)

Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter, Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of
the Marijuana Trade (2014)

Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (2016)

Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (2015)

Liat Kozma, “White Drugs in Interwar Egypt: Decadent Pleasures, Emaciated Fellahin,
and the Campaign against Drugs,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East vol. 33, no. 1 (2013): 89-101.

Peter Watt and Roberto Zepeda, Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence
in the New Narcoeconomy (2012)

Nick Schou, Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread
Peace, Love, and Acid to the World (2010)

Schumpeter, “Narconomics,” The Economist July 28, 2012

Janne Bjerre Christensen, Drugs, Deviancy and Democracy in Iran: The Interaction of
State and Civil Society (2011),

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, “The Myth of the Narco-state,” Space and Polity 20, no. 1

(2016): 26-38.
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Neil Carrier and Gernot Klantschnig, “Quasilegality: Khat, Cannabis and Africa’s Drug
Laws,” Third World Quarterly, 39, no. 2 (2018): 350-365.

Suzanna Reiss, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire (2014)

Nick Schou, Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread
Peace, Love, and Acid to the World (2010)

Gabriela Polit Dueñas, Narrating Narcos: Culiacán and Medellín (2013)

Hérodote - Géopolitique des drogues illicites

112 (2004) http://www.herodote.org/spip.php?rubrique9

Miguel A. Cabañas, “The Global Drug Trade and the War on Drugs in the Americas: A
Historical Review,” Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 2 (2014): 232-35.

Maziyar Ghiabi, Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran

(2019)

Ashley Neese Bybee, “The Twenty-First Century Expansion of the Transnational Drug
Tarde in Africa,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 66, no. 1, 2012, pp. 69–84.

Stephen Ellis, “West Africa's International Drug Trade,” African Affairs 108, no. 431
(2009): 171-96.

Primary Sources
http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/02/drug-use-map-world
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB86/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/colombia/index.htm
http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/CD/intro.jsp
http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/PE/intro.jsp
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexicos-drug-war-bypassing-
growers/2011/10/20/gIQAPKv93L_story.html
http://duncantonatiuh.wordpress.com/category/drug-smuggling/
http://duncantonatiuh.wordpress.com/category/narcos/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20625482

Documentary Films
The House I Live In (2012) - http://www.thehouseilivein.org/see-the-film/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/
http://www.wola.org/publications/the_human_face

Policy Resources
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http://www.uicc.org/
http://www.soros.org/about/programs/global-drug-policy-program
http://www.rand.org/multi/dprc.html
http://www.beckleyfoundation.org
http://www.poppyformedicine.net/modules/need_morphine/home
http://www.drugsense.org/cms/
http://www.unodc.org
http://idpc.net
http://www.justice.gov/dea/index.shtml
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp
http://www.intercambios.org.ar
http://www.wola.org/program/drug_policy
http://www.drugpolicy.org
http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/reports/