susan hennessy and benjamin witness, their look at the executive branch and presidential misconduct. check your program guide for more information. now here's peter andres. good afternoon i am the director of the watson institute for international and public affairs, and i am so delighted to be here today to celebrate killer high. fantastic new book by peter andres. i just want to say as a student chinese affairs, i hardly need to be told about the relationship between drugs and war. i have course know the intensity and the feeling of china and the central humiliation that began with the opium war, but at the same time it's easy, for people like myself to think about the

opium war as an anomaly or something very particular to a very particular time and place. i am saying i am guilty of thinking about the opium war that way. but great scholarship, truly great scholarship like killer high in a lot of the work that's done here at the watson institute forces me and us to see the world in a totally new way. this book, has forced me, and i think it forces all readers to really focus on the internal and expansive relationship between drugs and war. that relationship extends from war conducted by people who were on a form of drug, some kind of psychoactive substance. it extends to wars and conquest of drugs or the raw materials for drugs, extends to wars for markets and for outlets for drugs, and as we

are all familiar with wars against drug. but peter argues so effectively this phenomenon, this interaction between psychoactive substances and conflict, is laced throughout history. and right up until the present. peter makes a number of very interesting conclusions in this book but also raises a number of questions. think we are going to have a number of delve into those questions that again emphasizes this entirely new lens that peter did this to see the world. let me quickly explain how we are going to proceed. i'm going to ask peter to speak for ten minutes or so about the book, and then i'm going to ask our panelists each comment for ten minutes or so each on the book. and then we are going to open up to questions and answers. if you will be briefly introduced peter and our panelists. peter andrea's is a professor of international studies here

at the washington institute and department applicable science but he is the authored co-author coeditor of 11 books including of course killer hi, but also 2013 books smuggler nation, that's quite relevant today as we talk about living in a world of trade frictions and talk about piracy and make claims about a variety of countries. next to speak will be chris who is a pulitzer prizewinner journalist for the "new york times" i'm sure all of you know his work, i am a big fan. he is work to the "new york times" since 1999, his career as a foreign correspondent has focused on conflict regions in afghanistan, iraq, chechnya, libya, and syria among others. chris also served at the marine corps infantry man in combat veteran from the first gulf war, the persian gulf tour. next to speak will be in hell

at martinez who is a associate professor at massachusetts. the 2013 phd recipient from brown. she is a noted expert on latin american and politics with a particular emphasis on organized crime and criminality. illicit markets and the relationships between state actors and nonstate actors. often our nonstate actors purge she is the author of the award-winning 2018 book the politics of drug violence, chemicals cops and politicians and next appeared that some oxford university press. and steven kinzer, well known to everybody here is a senior fellow at the watson institute and of course an award-winning journalist who over the course of his career covered more than 50 countries on five continents. steven spent more than 20 years working for the day or times as a foreign core and

spohn at bureau chief, and among his numerous claims of books include the 2019 volume poison or in chief and the cia search for mind control. obviously topical for the discussion today. so with that, let me turn the microphone over to peter undress. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. if you are here because you think this is about the made-for-tv dvds, killer high sorry to disappoint you, i'm sure that dvd has and will else out sell my book. the genre for that listing on amazon is horror/comedy. [laughter] so this, my book is definitely horror there is no comedy.

in fact, the title killer i was going on my choice was originally was a subtitle of the book history of war in six drugs. let me just give you a few highlights of the book. what i try to do in the near 367 pages is retail the history of warfare through the lens of drugs. and we tell the history of drugs through the lens of war. and hopefully, for those who haven't read the book you will not quite think of war again in the same way. you will not quite think of drugs in the same way. in fact i would like to convince you that drugs and war work together and over time became quite addicted to each other. one-liner will be drugs made war, and war made drugs. these two things tend to be treated quite separately in the literature on war on drugs. so i systematically tried to tie them together across time,

cross place, and across psychoactive substance. the motivation for the book was not history, it was to bring history into what i consider a policy debate that suffers from a case of historical amnesia. a date about the nexus between drugs and conflict. we talked today about narco states, the first thing it comes to mind is afghanistan. we think about narco insurgents or narco interiors and we think of columbia and again maybe afghanistan. but look at this issue from a much deeper historical sweep, going back not just years and decades but centuries. the first true narco state is probably great britain. in fact great britain is probably the first narco empire if you think about the

sheer importance of alcohol taxes, importance of tea trade, that's a powerful drug i am addicted to it it's called caffeine. nicotine, don't touch the stuff. with the ports of opium trade. for the rise of britain as the world's foremost maritime power. in fact, narco insurgents, yes it's the telamon but it was also george washington. why do i say george washington? well, that conflict very much depended on revenue generated by tobacco. they got a loan from france based on tobacco revenue in the brits were so upset about it they burn tobacco fields never they found them. including tobacco fields owned by thomas jefferson. so what i try to do in this book is systematically unravel, interrogate, unpack the relationship between drugs and war. and i actually find there are five relationships.

what is war while on drugs, literally combat and drug use in war. but not just combat but on the homefront as well, and drug use by civilians coping with wartime. obviously, war is stressful work. no supplies that drugs help soldiers cope, they also help them celebrate victories, help them prepare for battle, give them liquid courage after all. i also talk about war through drugs. totally different than war while on drugs. war through drugs means using drugs primarily to fund war that ranges from tobacco taxes to cocaine and opium revenue. the full gamut from licit to illicit drugs. natural to semi synthetic to fully synthetic drugs.

from the most benign to the most dangerous psychoactive substances. then there is war for drugs which is actually distinct from the first two. the war for drugs is going to war over drug markets and instead already mentioned, the most famous case of this of course are the opium wars of the mid- 19th century where britain forced opium onto china through the barrel of a gun. bulk is also up to the present if you think about what's going on in mexico today. more people died in a sicko since late 2006 then died in iraq and afghanistan combined. drug violence, that although security analysts are reluctant to call it, war, if you actually look at the sheer number of casualties, if you look at how well armed the hell with the perpetrators are using wartime equivalent, the actors themselves are military

trained and defectors from the military. one case u.s. trained antidrug force turn into a drug hit squad. for drug trafficking organizations. and when you think about the state itself has deployed its military and a french roll inviting drugs. the mexican military's antidrug at this point. but not just mexico but columbia just extends and brazil to some extent. and even the united states until 1980 has loosened that restricted the u.s. military for and law enforcement purposes. now very much, embedded in the war on drugs. at the border and beyond, and proliferation military's policing and swat teams were invented before the war on drugs. but really took off, thanks to the war on drugs and this is using military technologies, ex military person to now, and

fighting a substance. there is the war against drugs, which is closely related but distinct. war against drugs start as a metaphor, nixon declared war against drugs. he didn't actually send in troops to fight drugs but since the 1980s and has progressively become more militarized and we can call it an outright war. and last but not least, this is probably the research in the book that most surprised me, is drugs after war. how much for itself left a lasting legacy in terms of drug production, trafficking, regulation, drug tastes have been fundamentally altered thanks to wars in ways that we often don't give the work credit for. just to give you a few examples, why are we a coffee drinking rather than a tea

drinking nation? because we won the american revolution. the brits went on with tea, we turn to coffee. they not only turn to coffee but whiskey. rum was produced right here in rhode island right before the american revolution. distilleries kept it going including in massachusetts, never revived after the american revolution. whiskey became the alcohol beverage of choice. it was a national drink, it no longer needed importance from abroad. attorney inset british drink that rum, tea, so the very taste that we now just take for granted, are actually the result of war. the very criminalization of cocaine is a product of world war ii. very few people remember that cocaine was legally produced by japanese pharmaceutical

companies. the destruction of those fields and the destruction of the japanese pharmaceutical cocaine is part of the u.s. victory in world war ii. the u.s. turned against cocaine much earlier course, but it wasn't just with the japan they was actually able to globalize for cocaine prohibition. actually one of the biggest losers of world war ii. >> illegal was one of the biggest winners. those of the five relationships. i want to tell you a little bit in the few minutes i have about the six key drugs are paired of our day given you hints because i've mentioned some of them. the oldest most multipurpose and argue bleed double-edged is alcohol. it goes back to beer, and wine. and then the distilling

revolution really did indeed revolutionaries things. think about, just think about why france is the world's most famous wine producing region in the world. the roman conquest brought wine to france. board joe was up as a port by the romans after the romans retreated and pushed back. wine endures in france. right? the distilled revolution was absently essential to the conquest of the new world. think about the importance of alcohol as an ethnic cleanser and the westwards expansion. in fact, alcohol became so important, that it was actually rum rations on both sides of the american revolution. after the revolution, whiskey became part of u.s. military rations.

in fact, the british, believe it or not had rum rations until the early 1970s on their naval ships. the second drug, tobacco, and arrives much later than alcohol but once it arrives, equally as potent and in fact, the downsides of alcohol, alcohol basically you can raise a lot of revenue but you might have drunk military. the czar was able to finance the largest army standing army in your with his alcohol revenue but his soldiers were drunk. tobacco is highly portable, fights both anxiety and boredom. relieves -- is highly taxable and doesn't impede performance even if it might eventually kill you. the globalization of tobacco is intimately also about the spread of warfare. so globalize warfare.

the very mode of tobacco consumption was closely influenced by war. so why did we turn away from hookahs and pipes to cigars and then cigarettes. increasingly portable, easy to protas, to move, this was the intimate story of war. in fact, cigarettes, by the time world war ii came around, was the most valued ration in soldier rations. third, caffeine, my drug of choice i'm completely addicted to the stuff. it's the most -- world's most popular psychoactive substance. but certainly far from a benign relationship to war. arguably stimulated into expansion, i already mentioned the british empire tea. but then we also have the rise of caffeinated soldiers. it's fascinating in the case

of the u.s. civil war, coffee is mentioned in soldier diaries more often than gun, cannon, or rifle. coffee is just an essential ingredient to keep soldiers going. instant coffee was an instant hit on the battlefield in world war ii. and then outlived world war ii. the coffee break was actually introduced for defense workers during world war ii. and then outlived world war ii and institutionalized in the workplace in the 1950s. and then, all the way up to today, the favorite beverage at military bases across the world are hyper caffeinated beverages like red bull, monster, and so on.

for is opium. i already mentioned opium wars are extreme case of the relationship to the war on drugs which is the war for drugs. for example the japanese imperial occupation of china. there is no way that japan in the 1930s could fund its occupation of china without narcotics. amphetamines and extreme cases of war while on drugs says induces speed is the essence of war. he did not mean amphetamines but he would be pretty impressed at how important amphetamines were to keep soldiers on many sides going. specially during world war ii. and last but not least, cocaine, the extreme case of war against drugs which have already said a few things about. i will stop there and turn things over to chris.

[applause] >> thank you peter. i'm going to open with compliments if you look at my copy, all the way through, you can tell i was engaged. when i get to the end of the book and i've used up to in pins it's probably a sign it's a good book. i was in a really lucky reader, peter got me a copy over christmas and i spent the holidays with it. it's a work of history as you just heard. and history is an act of making diverse and sometimes divergent sources cohere into an understanding and maybe a set of narratives that are relatable analyses that can make you as you said imagine the worlds and understand and new. in this case the world of war. that was my experience but i don't want to talk about history at least not distant history. i want to talk more about now and the more recent observation since the persian

gulf war of 9091. in the so-called global war on terror because 2001 and bringing the events that peter has related up to the present time. are there any recent veterans in the room? any? no? well good maybe one they'll be something on c-span and you can fact check me as intel people data making comments afterward. we talk about or peter talks about in the book and in his remarks, the place the various substances have on the battlefield. the battlefields of this error that we live in now, have changed a bit from modern conventional militaries. wars become so technical and the military commands have become in some cases so politically sensitive, that some of the long-standing drugs in the battlefield are now prohibited. alcohol most notably.

for a variety of reasons, although the military is a heavy user at the personal level of alcohol. at the unit level, when deployed, alcohol not to say nonexistent because it's not. but it's almost invisible. it is quite rare it's a very unusual to see alcohol in the battlefield some of this is because the wars since 2001 since the gulf war in fact have often played out among islamic populations. and there is a sensitivity to having the military having this faux pas in the country. it should have been in some cases invited or occupied. but in any case hoping to get along with the population better than what the otherwise might. so there still alcohol you won't see much of it. you have to look.

when i was in the 80s and 90s, there were, among the troops, i was in the marine infantry this things called snakebite kits. they were used for is in or a joke and their people would have sent to them shampoo bottles, perhaps with a little bourbon in it. but it was quite guarded, it was very obvious as you know most everyone here has some sort of relationship with alcohol. it's very hard to hide alcohol use. with the odor. i remember one snakebite kit being broken out on a warship i was on and they literally locked the doors and someone said i just got bit by a funking snake and pulled out a bottle and everybody got like a couple of shots. that was it. on a ten month deployment. there is not much alcohol there at all. but, there are many other drugs out there. and there is a deep hypocrisy and how our military and

western military in general relate to drugs in their own forces versus into their allied forces. and what i mean by that is since the failed hostage rescue attempt in the carter administration, which drug use was given part of the blame for the failure for the mechanical failure of the aircraft. as a story that circulated the military years after, that the sailor had been smoking pot in the hangar deck, and it caused a small fire in a garbage can and it activated sprinkler system which had sprayed some saltwater and some of the aircraft and this was considered perhaps a culprit in one of the aircraft failures on the mission. whether the story is apocryphal i have not done the deep dive to search it but it was a story we had. as a result it had gone to service that coming out of vietnam they use marijuana very heavily now had drug testing.

you teen regular urinalysis. sometimes randomized. they would do things like take a unit and poll numbers out of a hat and savior so security and then five or seven then you all have to report to the first sgt for urinalysis today. and it was not quite zero-tolerance, you were given two chances. but you would be prosecuted on the first chance or on the first hit and discharged on the second with a negative discharge that could affect you for the rest of your life. so the use of marijuana, really fell off in the 80s. in our force, in the western forces, but when you go to the battlefields now, you will find the allies may be heavily using. and some of you said your book is horrible comedy, some of the scenes ice on afghanistan would qualify as comedy. it would be tense alongside each other with americans and western forces in one and the afghan partner and the other. and the americans would all be

dipping copenhagen, which is a tobacco snuff that basically tastes like cow ship. [laughter] but it is incredibly popular and it's very useful that's hands-free and smokeless. so people can take it on patrols and operate a vehicle or rifle, radio, any number of things with it. you not to fumble with mattress, and so it's immensely popular. to everybody in the american tent would likely be using tobacco and some caffeine, monsters were immensely popular. in the afghan tent, literally smoke billowing out of it from marijuana. hashish was universal i would say among the afghan units, may be not among every afghan but every unit it was impossible to not smell it or see it. is openly used. a coursers traffic between the two tenths amenity americans are going to the afghan tent and getting high.

provincially depending upon which servicemember might be assigned to, the agricultural had many different client claimants and different agricultural climates. in some areas, some regions of afghanistan marijuana is grown extensively. and so, if you are in the mountains you would not see this marijuana growing. but if you are down in the step you would see massive marijuana fields, and troops would patrol it and threw it and pick it. many of them would smoke it. if i do some units that had heavy marijuana use. so heavy that the commanders had to wink at it and be careful about not having drug test because they would've had to discharge the entire unit or punish the entire unit. and there's one story that's related to me by a close friend of mine who is in the core, i was a journalist at this point often with the marine corps. this form of marine was a year

in donor when the test came along. he was clean and he would donate urine to his friends particularly in the mortar pit, some mortar unit was high all the time. basically a baked mortar unit he would donate his urine so that his friends wouldn't get hammered by the rules. but hash and pots, while they were very common on the battlefield were mostly isolated to the afghans. this creates situations of hypocrisy where we have on one hand there's a zero-tolerance but our allies are openly actively extensively using it, when you bring it forward you bring it forward to drugs after work, marijuana has a significant place in the conversation now. the government, again has a set of policies that don't align with the human behaviors of the population the government service.

what i mean by that is veterans come home and they go to the va, and many of the veterans have a number of problems and substances whether illicitly obtained or legally prescribed, it's part of the common remedy. and the va will prescribe all manner of drugs to the former ranking file to the veterans. anti- depression stabilizes opioids for pain. because marijuana is a schedule one controlled substance by the dea, federally, the va cannot administer marijuana. even though jurisdictionally, many veterans in the states like rhode island to have medical marijuana programs that make marijuana quite excessively legally, the va won't deny care to someone who's using marijuana but they cannot be involved in the prescription, which creates pretty disheartening circumstances for many

veterans. i know veterans who live in states who don't have medical marijuana and they risk legal action going out and getting it on the street. i am not here to say marijuana has necessarily universal panacea for many of the afflictions veterans suffer when they come home, because i think there is a science on that. there is mixed individual experiences vary. many find it hopeful some dell. self prescription it has its pitfalls. it's very hard to get it regulated just right in a way that consistently produced pharmaceutical product is more easy to regulate because the product is the same from event to event, dose to dose. some not here to advocate the marijuana position, but i am to say here to say it's deeply confusing for veterans that they are heavily prescribed with opiates and other drugs, but do not have any formal counseling on the use of medical marijuana with many of them finds alleviates their

symptoms. : : :. >> first of all i'm very happy to be here today. i am honored. and then have the intellectual influence on me but i have

always admired to tackle big questions in a simple language and i think it is very clear that this is the work of an intellectual. and those and that actually to mention that at the end of the book but and with the rest of the work to basically go back to history. and that is such an important

thing. and then to show us the problems and then it appears here again so it is very important so in her words and especially today and to be isolated and to be influential for people like me so i think

the third element and that is simplistic and the ideas. and all of those elements are present in the book i think it takes on the nonconventional wisdom the way that we think of the new wars and foot outside of science the influential leaders which we have seen as the emergence of these kinds of wars.

that is irrational. that if you implicitly to say this relationship with the illicit drugs and not just crazy and the other looking countries and that is a key part of the book. so this connection but the drugs that really took off.

and then to see negative but but it always seems to be like the olive bird in the book. meant to be both why the nerve on - - widely used. that it does belong. and with that coffee that you are drinking and afterwords it is fascinating. and then the brand is really

much more popular. because there is a psychoactive substance. and that has influenced and that to show that in certain places so the production of these drugs the war through drugs. and in that regard every thing is fascinating reading. and is it new or interesting.

and with the use of methamphetamines was widespread especially world war ii. and then to think about these drugs between cocaine and methamphetamines so one thing and one construct that i found and cocaine and methamphetamines. and that is not like what you'd see with alcohol or tobacco but they call it is

successful as a legal market. so especially it's interesting why you think that is the case because there is some potential he will say from the pharmaceutical company. with cocaine especially with the sensory. so that is an interesting question. and another common thread throughout the book is the

role of regulating the markets is intervening here and in these stories it is very useful so they chose in many ways have men have been unsuccessful putting the demands with the war on drugs so in japan in 1600 and all those are successful because there are pushback from those markets so right now with job reform we could talk mostly and the reason for that there

is more widespread use. and is much as i was reading to say yes the entire history saying what they intend to but at the same time it doesn't seem that it can be applied as cocaine today. and so knowing what we know of this history and basically there is a push for them to move forward because there's not enough to keep them under control. but i don't know how i'm doing on time but another thing that

was very interesting from the book but what i intend to do is the reason to focus on major powers but basically major wars and major powers. but really how major powers of only western russia and china and this is essential because these are the challenges and the narratives that we have from what is happening the last two or three decades. but really in the long run of history i think that is a

force of choosing the cases but i am curious how you chose those stories because you have a lot to choose from and it's very fascinating to highlight these ideas but i also highlight stories because i don't want to say that this is in relation to the drugs. so yes i have to say that great britain is a statement and i also want to close with one last section of the major contribution to look back to

history to distinguish from what we have seen from the current problems. and i see how we go back to see the things that are not so new with a lot of these elements it provides a lot of food for thought and a lot of elements to rethink and at the same time i get criticism from people to say we don't care about we care about the future and to be engaged in policy discussions of how people will react with what you talk about with policy recommendations. thank you.

[applause] >> i'm eager to hear more from peter so let me make a few brief comments. what i was most impressed about beyond the subject matter is though whole approach of trying to look at history in a new way. that's when the most exciting parts of the business we are in. fax don't change. we understand that differently as time passes and we get through a rearranged fact that is a great category of research into this book that fits it gives us a new way to understand where we have been and where we are now. we understand from this book the drugs are a tool of war and also a reason for war that combination of those two highlights the importance of this scene. but to pick up using the word

hypocrisy and that shines through this book there is also a tremendous hypocrisy the way government deals with drugs on the one hand condemning them but on the other hand using them as tools for their own political purposes internationally. we use those drugs not only as motivation but as inspiration for what is out there for us and how we can get it. this hypocrisy extends to our tolerance drug traffickers from other countries just as we decide that must be a terrorist in me find a way to make it into a terrorist another terrace we go and bend over backwards if we like them.

the same thing happens with the drug lord brick i had an experience i will never forget with one of my favorite druglords the only one i got to know that was noriega. will never forget having an interview with him and telling him of the many reports that he was involved in drug trafficking so how do you respond to the reports cracks he smiled and gestured at his aid who had a briefcase noriega pulled it out and it's a letter and hands it to me it is a letter on the letterhead of the dea and says dear general noriega thank you so much for all the help you have given us in controlling the drug traffic in the caribbean basin signed director of dea.

now if we all knew he was a drug traffic or the dea newbie he had a great game he was working for one cartel and when the other cartel would use panama he would find out and call the dea that they would do a best. in the one - - doing a drug bust and now he had cocaine with full knowledge of the dea through other channels. also through the eighties i remember sitting in nicaragua that the sandinistas were financing their war in part by shipping cocaine and the contras were doing the same we didn't have the detailed information to report but would we spoke among ourselves the answer was how could they not cracks is a poor country for you have a fantastic market with piles of money on a plane flight so i have no doubt that was a substantial

contributor to the wars in central america. i think those of us that have seen combat understand war is much more chaotic than it seems to be when you read about it the act of going out and participating in the war with so many deep instincts and principles inside every human being that's one of the reasons why drugs become important so these drugs actually help people pay something in a normal life you would not be able to face but it's very important for the governments. so that helps wipe away suggestions governing forces

might have with the use of those drugs. mentioning vietnam it is absolutely true it's a turning point in the us military not only to one that was drug control but not coincidentally to build a volunteer i'm sorry a draft army to a voluntary army. this is a result of drug use in the military now we have the all volunteer army is an enabling factor for our government when they went to prosecute when people are not worried about the draft. my first started the book i was wondering why they did not use sugar as a drug but then i realized he did. [laughter] it was wrapped up in a larger drug. in my last book i wrote about

the u.s. army efforts to develop lsd as a weapon of war they actually had the idea they can have huge amounts on enemy populations they would think the rifles were hydrangea and they wouldn't shoot at them but then that's the reason it's not in the book with the effect of lsd was too predictable to be used as a weapon of war. i also think this combination of factors that peter has so brilliantly highlighted in the book still play out today in many ways. very small but very big i was told by the intelligence officers working in afghanistan somebody is living in there we want to get as you are walking to the village

look and see if there are no cigarette butts outside that somebody in the television. they may have picked up on that by now now maybe they drop those outside their homes but that was a factor also one of the principal foreign policy tools now and has been for several decades to sanction government so they cannot freely import the economy is greatly restricted and with those two strong episodes of yugoslavia and iraq. those were both situations where government was pressed and because of sanctions the government turned to drug trafficking no better example of this they had north korea a

major industrial exporter of drugs and does so because it is not able to have other kinds of economic activity. we certainly wouldn't want to take the role of opium to build up the economy it was a trade for all the factories that made new england to such a world power so for this book i take away a new lens looking at history sometimes writing about iran why do they even have a government like it does today cracks because of the revolution 40 years ago. why cracks because they felt the old government was not respecting their democracy. where did it come from cracks 19 oh six constitutional revolution in iran. what set off the constitutional revolution cracks the tobacco revolt the

british insisted and the shaw of iran agreed to give the british company a monopoly control over the entire tobacco industry growing and producing or selling tobacco even the shaw's men refused to smoke from the leading religious figure in iran the 81 - - the entire crisis was set off by the rebellion of a tobacco so once you begin to understand how much history remains to be explained in a new way and how valuable people that their insights are such they allow us to find a new line's to understand what we thought we already understood. thank you.

[applause] >> the floors open no one told us through pictures. >> that this is a point several people mentioned implicitly incredible irony and complexity and history that you want us to take home a message that i don't go to war and stop the hypocrisy you may have more but what word you advise countries to study so deeply this history.

>> i have to say of all the things i have written this is the book where i am more stumped than usual. with the direct explicit policy recommendation. and for those who have private armies that is a logical conclusion one can reach from the book. without level of inquiry the source of funding today drops it.

but in with nonstate actors. historically authorities have used drug revenue so if that your priority with the legalization but obviously that debate is much more complicated it is the farthest if you are north of massachusetts it helps it is not the major funder of violence of insurgents.

>> i haven't read the book but i do want to congratulate you the way that drugs intersect i'm surprised with that basis of assassination so the question with the opium wars are a prime example and then our covert it in those

nationstates. >> just with the first thing that you mentioned and wondering if it is pure myth which is part of folklore and don't go there because of the evidence is the story that people like to tell. the second question one of the relationships that we unpack and this is why it's important to distinguish because with those policy discussions actually think war through

drugs overwhelms. there is always exceptions to be extraordinarily prudent facilitator of warfare but that is why they went to war so the opium wars are the first thing that comes to mind but there is a reason we fall back to the war for drugs is large in the realm of illicit drugs and largely in the places. >> not the china side as the

opm connection. and with the state power and private power. and over the last five years and that it continues that there are new estimates. and different manufacturing of different parts of the world. with the 1600 so here is what we have of what happened to

china after the opium wars. but just to give you a sense of the correlation until 1800 china produced one third of the manufacturing output. and what we call the arrest today of one fourth. by 1860. and then there is a steep decline. that donald trump had 3 percent at six.2. the rest rises so the question is are there other examples that you know and then to have

such deep declines as we saw in china cracks and with this disclosure of 100 years of humiliation. and are there other such cases a steep decline correlated if not caused by wars or drugs. maybe but i cannot think of a case but having said that and with that unitary causal relationship and has you teach

that opm is a culprit and then in relationship to war at the end of the day there is warning meter that says i don't want you to drug the analysis. what happened to china after the opium wars but opium is an important culprit and why it is happening after the second they threw in the towel so much that it basically became the largest producer of opium in the world. and then just to legalize the stuff and produce it themselves.

but that economic decline and its relative. that opm is a big culprit but it is the identity and the psychology of thinking and then to pave the way to the chinese revolution in a substantial way. >> one of the biggest losers of the chinese revolution. >> leading the mostly being draconian that the world has ever seen like the opm from china given its history and as a drug move south into southeast asia.

>> thank you for sharing. personally i immediately jumped filling about killer high to the sixties and the lsd and anti- drug movement. especially with hallucinogenic drugs. and mushrooms and m dna, i just love your perspective on how you host the drugs through today to fit into that discussion. >> great question. i explained in the introduction with a history of six drugs not 7 million or

nine and for all sorts of reasons and to be effective on the battlefield and with those niche drugs and that you mention in some cases the antiwar drug with cannabis in the sixties. and then as mind control drug but that still did not rise to the status of the popular profitable drugs one thing that will grow to return gis

in coping with the aftermath for there is growing research showing of the micro- dosing of m dna. there is a push to get the fda to use it for medical purposes. don't know if we can project into the future but frankly sitting here ten years ago nobody would look at the legalization of marijuana so it is possible actually for what you just described in the present moment. >> is such provocative work. i love it but to make some comparisons to other addictions we do talk about

the addiction to oil and what are the parallels with drug wars and oil related wars but also a different kind of addiction social media, facebook from that kind of commerce so can you draw parallels across the psychoactive substances with a different kind of commercial product? >> great question i don't go there in the book. and perhaps i should have. when of the relationship and

in that regard larger universe of profitable commodities to generate revenue with the unfamiliar story. so in central america than in the 1980s. so that is pragmatism for the legal status of things without legal comparison. and social media in one of the

better-known historians it basically does take this big modern world of things we are addicted to including video games. i don't go there. but it is provocative reading. and that i do go out in limb a little bit is to say with war and drugs so to think of war itself as a drug in those psychoactive oh one - - psychoactive effects can be considered drug like because of the adrenaline rush.

and that is the case of addiction. and the war journalist who have gone out late chris hedges and to the rush of war. memoirs and diaries from soldiers as the equivalent of addiction. >> thank you. so the question i was holding onto anybody who is doing

anything with addiction science and some other approach and the age of addiction and then brings it right to the present i would not point to one person as the addiction expert. that there is research going on that should be a lot more fun and then the very idea interestingly enough. there is a possibility down the road.

>> and i may recognize yes to be very grateful for that. and with the opium more in china as the causality if anything the war and drugs would have been the cause and the drug war. >> thank you so much. >> so what about the cocaine story? >> we will conclude by letting the panelists say something

but your question why cocaine did not take off on the battlefield that actually made the appearance of world war ii there is plenty of evidence that then major states went against cocaine led by the us to basically move against cocaine. as a big fan of cocaine because they were testing it on soldiers as a magical wonder drug. it's a perfect example easy to identify how something changed to change factually as to why exactly because cocaine because it is a more criminalized status therefore

much less use for functional purposes on the battlefield now that you press, there were efforts or suggestions the us military study the positive effects on the raw material for cocaine but it is mildly stimulating and the use of the anti- drug mode it squashed any research even though for many centuries they found it to have energy boosting and hunger reducing. at does open the door for methamphetamines because in fact what is interesting methamphetamines become criminalized in the sixties that is when cocaine takes off so people turn to cocaine

recreationally when methamphetamines become much less available. >> so to have the high point on the last page i agree with that observation so from my perspective it is addictive on the battlefield for those that are watching the fighting but it's also addictive add a higher level and for the general and politicians in such a great political benefit paying off in so many ways. so i feel that addiction is pernicious from those seeing it unfold.

but then still get the understanding but the geopolitics because it was coming from latin america but thank you so much. >> i am not a historian to look at modern military acuity and this book is very valuable for that to underline some of my own experiences. if you really want to see to

observe and document the failures of the military one of the surefire places and the work against drugs with afghanistan one of the surest ways to get an aground fight was to do counter narcotics work it was not ideological but practical because to burn a poppy field is to essentially impact the hillbilly economy with cover so the american military realizes quickly the field commanders and they stop doing it all there was an effort to reduce the opium poppy production they didn't want to lose people to this there was a lot of people and that

doctrine contradiction to get along with a population but the wartime economy opium based is it the enduring product that is imperishable. so it is very heavily that could grow opium also those that look like accomplishment but actually are not that the fields it already would have been harvested and then pay the farmer to let it be burned so that was a very safe patrol to go on but it was also an

absolute farce it was also common you could find very reliably places where it would almost be certainly grown just by how the way it was. >>. thank you there are books outside. [applause] >> there is a reception outside thank you. [applause]