The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America

Marcy investigates why South American drug trafficking has remained so hardy and lucrative even as the U.S. has spent billions—usually on wrongheaded measures, as he sees it—to combat both production and export. Costly raids and drug seizures have had minimal impact on production and no impact on U.S. consumption, argues Marcy. Furthermore, the U.S.'s obsession with coca crop eradication without any equivalent spending on economic development has kept the coca farmers without a viable market around which to design an alternative industry. But there are no simple solutions, according to Marcy: drug legalization “could spawn more problems than it solves,” and the disparity in power between the U.S. and Latin American nations keeps the “war on drugs” unwinnable. While the prose can be dry, Marcy's connections and conclusions richly reveal how intricately the legitimate and illegal economies are entangled across two continents. (Mar.)