see all the book tv and c-span products available. >> good afternoon. i am the director of the boston institute for international public affairs and i am so delighted to be here today to

celebrate "killer high". as a student of chinese affairs are hardly have to be told about the important of the relationship between drugs and war. of course i know the intensity of feelings in china about the century of humiliation that begin with the opium war but at the same time, it is easy for a lot of people including myself to think of something like the opium war as in the mom and we or something very particular to a time and place and i have to say i'm guilty of thinking about the opium war that way. a truly great scholarship like killer height and a lot of the work done at the boston institute forces us and me too see the world in a totally new way. this book has forced me and all readers to focus on the internal and incredibly expansively

relationship between drugs and war. that relationship extends from war conducted by people who were often on a form of drug, some kind of psychoactive substance, it extends towards an con quest of drugs in the mom material, it extends towards four markets and for outlets for drugs and of course wars against drugs, but as peter argues, this phenomenon, this substance and conflict is least throughout history and right up to the present. peter makes a number very interesting conclusions but raise a number of questions. i think we'll have an opportunity with a fantastic panel to dive into those questions which will emphasize the entirely new lens that peter

gives us to see the world. let me explain how we will proceed, i will ask peter to come up and speak for ten minutes about the book and then i will ask her panel two, for ten minutes or so on the book and then we will open up to questions and answers. if you will let me briefly introduce peter in our panelists. peter is a professor of international studies as the washington institute and the department of political science, he's the author and co-author of 11 books, including "killer high" but also the 2013 book smuggler nation, how trade made america, quite relevant today as we live in a world of trade frictions and piracy and make claims about a variety of countries and listed activities. next to speak will be chris who

is a journalist for the new york times, i'm sure many of you are familiar with his work, i am a big fan, he's worked at the new york times since 1999, his career as a foreign correspondent has focused on regions spanning afghanistan, iraq, the palestinian territories, libya and syria among others. chris served as a marine corps infantryman in combat veteran from the first persian gulf war. next to speak will be angelica durant martinez, she is a phd from brown and she is a noted expert, latin american and comparative politics with a particular emphasis on organized crime and criminality, illicit markets and the relationship between actors and nonstate actors.

she is the author of the award-winning 2018 book, the politics of drug violence, criminal goal cops in columbia and mexico that was from oxford university press, and stephen kinzer one to everybody here, the senior fellow at the washington institute and an award-winning journalist who over the course of his career covered more than 50 countries on five continents. he spent more than 20 years working for the new york times as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief among his numerous claim books include the 2019 volume poison are in chief, the cia search for mind control. obviously topical for the discussion today. so with that, let me turn the microphone over to peter andre andreas. [applause] >> thank you all for coming.

if you are here because you think this is about the need for tv dvds, "killer high" sorry to disappoint you, i'm sure the dvd has and will out sell my book, the donor for that listed on amazon is horror/comedy. [laughter] so my book is definitely horror, there's not a lot of comedy in it. in fact the title was not my selection, my choice was the subtitle of the book, a history of war and six drugs. that may give you a few highlights of the book, what i try to do in a mere 300 some pages is retail the history of warfare through the lens of drugs in retail the history of drugs through the lens of war. and hopefully for those of you that read the book, you will not

quite think of war again in the same way and you won't think of drugs in the same way. in fact i like to give into the drugs and war work together and over time they became quite addicted to each other. but one line would be drugs made war and war made drugs. these two things tend to be treated quite separately so what i do is systematically tried to tie them together across time, across 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 the suffers from a severe case of historical amnesia. a debate about the so-called nexus between drugs and conflict. we talked about narco states, the first thing that comes to mind is afghanistan, when you

think about narco insurgents or terrorists when you think about columbia and maybe afghanistan. but look at this issue from a much deeper historical sweep, going back not just years and decades but even 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 and the importance of the tea trade, that's a powerful drug, it's called caffeine. or the importance of the opium trade for the rise of britain and maritime. in fact narco insurgents, yes it's a taliban but also george washington. why do i say george washington,

that conflict depended on revenue generated by tobacco. i had to learn it from france, the brits were so upset they bring tobacco fields whenever they found them. including tobacco fields owned by thomas jefferson. what i try to do in the book is systematically unravel interrogate the relationship between drugs and were in they claim there is five relationships, what is war on drugs combating drug use in wartime, not just combat and but also on the homefront as well, drug use by civilians coping with wartime. obviously war is stressful work, no surprise that drugs help soldiers cope, they help them celebrate victories and prepare for battle and give them liquid courage after all. i also talk about war through

drugs, totally different of war and war. that ranges from tobacco taxes to cocaine and opium from illicit drugs. natural to semi thin that it to fully synthetic drugs. most benign to psychoactive substances. there is war for drugs which is distinct from the first two, it is actually gone to war over drug markets and as a mention the most famous case are the opium wars of the mid-19th century where britain forced opium onto china for the bail of a gun. but it goes all the way up to the present if we think about what is going on in mexico today, more people have died in mexico since late 2006 then have

died in iraq and afghanistan combined. drug violence that although security analyst are reluctant to call it war, if you look at the sheer number of casualties, if you look at how well armed the perpetrators are using military grade equipment, actually the actors themselves are military elite trained in one case u.s. trained antidrug force trained into a drug hit squad for drug trafficking organizations and when you think about the state itself white deployed its military in a frontline world finding drugs, it is essentially an antidrug force at this point, and then he say is not just mexico but columbia as some extent and result of some extent, even the united states until the 1980s has loosened which is a restricted the use of the u.s. military from law enforcement

purposes. now very much embedded in the war on drugs. at the border and beyond and perforation of militarized policing, swat teams were invented before the war on drugs that really took off think to the war on drugs, using military technology and military personnel and approaches to fighting a substance. >> there is a war against drugs which is closely related but distinct for war against drugs, started as a metaphor, nixon declared war against drugs, he did not send in troops to fight drugs, but since the 1980s it is become progressively more militarized so we can call it an outright war.

last but not least, this is probably the research in the book that surprised me, drugs after war, how much war itself left a lasting legacy with regulation, drug taste have been fundamentally altered thanks to wars in ways we do not give war credit for. just to give you a few examples. why are we coffee drinking then a tea drinking nation. because we won the american revolution, the brits went on with t, we turn to coffee. we not only turn to coffee, we turn to whiskey and then heroin was the drug of choice produced in rhode island which kept most of rhode island going including massachusetts, and after the american revolution and whiskey became the beverage of choice which was a national drink, no longer needed imports, and to

turn against the british drink tea. the very taste that we take for granted are actually a result of war, the very criminalization of cocaine is a product of world war ii, very few people remember that cocaine was produced by japanese pharmaceutical companies in the destruction of those fields in the pharmaceutical as part of a victory in world war ii, they turned against cocaine much earlier and only of japan that they were able to globalize its preference for cocaine prohibition, it was one of the biggest losers of world war ii. you legal cocaine was arguably one of the biggest winners.

there is a five relationships, i want to tell you a little bit that i have the six key drugs, i mentioned some of them, the oldest most multipurpose and double edged drug is alcohol. it goes back to beer and wine and then the distilling revolution did revolutionize things. think about why france is the world's most famous wine producing region in the world, the conquest is what brought wine to france, barty was set up as a port by the romans and after the romans retreated and pushed back. the revolution was absolutely essential to the conquest of the new world, think about the importance of the cleanser and

westward expansion. in fact, alcohol became so important that it was actually rationed on both sides of the american revolution. after the revolution whiskey became part of the u.s. military rations in fact the british believe it or not had more russians until the early 1970s on their naval ships. tobacco arrives much later than tobacco but once it arrives it's equally potent but the downsides of alcohol, basically you can raise a lot of revenue but you might have a drink military. they were able to finance the largest army in europe with vodka revenue but the soldiers were drunk, tobacco is ideal

were drug, highly affordable and fights anxiety and boredom, relieves -- highly taxable and does not impede performance even if it might eventually kill you. the globalization of tobacco is also the spread of warfare, soldiers global life warfare and there's a motive consumption closely influence. why do we turn away from pipes to cigars and cigarettes to increasingly portable easily to produce and to move an intimate story of war. in fact, cigarettes by the time world war ii came around where the most valued russian and soldier rations.

third, caffeine, drug of choice, i'm completely addicted to the stuff, it's the most world popular psychoactive sub luncheon substance but certainly in relationship to war, arguably stimulated in expansion, i meant to the british empire of tea. but then we also have the rise of caffeinated soldiers, in the case of the civil war, coffee is mentioned in soldier diaries more often than gun, cannon or rifle. coffee is an essential ingredient to keep soldiers going. instant coffee was an instant hit on the battlefield in world war ii and outlived world war ii. the coffee break was actually introduced for defense workers during world war ii and outlived

world war ii and institutionalized in the workplace in the 1950s. . . . there is no way japan in the late 1930s could fund the occupation without narcotics. while on drugs since speed is the essence of war he didn't

mean them that means that he would be pretty impressed how important amphetamines were to keep soldiers on many sites going during world war ii. and last but not least, cocaine the extra in case of war which i've already said a few things about. i will stop there and turn things over to chris. [applause] >> i'm going to open with compliments if you look at my coffee all the way through, you can tell that i was engaged when i get to the end of the book and i've used it to ink pens it is a good sign it's a good book. i was lucky he got me a copy over christmas and i spent the holidays with it. if a work of history as you just heard and it is an act of making vapors into sometimes divergent

sources to hear to an understanding and narratives that are relatable and analysis that can make you as you said reimagine the world and in this case the world of the war. i don't want to talk about history at least not distant history. i want to talk more about now and more recent observations since the persian gulf war of 90 and 91 and the so-called global war on terror since 2001. are there any recent veterans in the room? i will welcome you to comment afterwards. peter talks about in the book to

place various substances have on the battlefield and the era that we would now have changed a bit from modern conventional and the military commands have become in some cases politically sensitive that some of the long-standing battlefields are prohibited from alcohol most notable for a variety of reasons although the military is a heavy user of the personal level of alcohol at the individual level and at the unit level. i'm not going to call his nonexistent but it's almost invisible and quiet where to see it on the battlefield. some of this is because of the war as we've had them since 2001 and since the gulf war in fact often played out on the islamic

populations. and to make the social faux pas. in one case they hope to get along with the population better than what they otherwise might. you won't see much of it. when i was in the 80s and '90s i was in the marine infantry. it was a very obvious as most everyone here has some sort of relationship with alcohol that it was hard to hide the fall of the use of the orders. they literally locked the doors

and said i can't get my snake and pulled out a bottle and everyone got a couple of shots and that was it in a ten month deployment. there wasn't much alcohol they are at all. but there are many other drugs out there and there is a deep hypocrisy that they would see in how the military relief with drugs in their own forces and the attempt later in the administration it was after a sailor had been smoking pot in a hangar deck and it caused a small fire and activate a sprinkler system which sprayed

salt water on some of the aircraft and it was considered perhaps the culprit in one of the aircraft failures on the nation. whether the stories are -- as a result we have gone through a service coming out of vietnam using marijuana very heavily they now have drug testing routine analysis sometimes randomized they would take a unit and pull numbers out of a hat you have to return to your analysis today and it wasn't quite zero tolerance. in our force in the western

forces when you go to the battlefields now and you will find the allies may be heavily using. some of the things i saw in afghanistan qualify as comedy. the text alongside each other with americans or western forces and the afghan part is on the other and the americans would all be dipping copenhagen which is a tobacc tobacco stuff that basically tastes like how -- tastes like cow shit. you don't have to fumble with matches and so it is immensely popular. everyone would likely be using it and some things were immensely popular.

it's impossible not to smell it and it was openly used. and if there is traffic between the two so many were going into the afghan tent and getting high. there are many different agricultural products marijuana is grown extensively. and so if you are in the mountains, you wouldn't see marijuana growing but if you were in the spirit dated steps you would see the massive marijuana fields patrolling.

it's so heavy that the commanders had to wink at it and be careful about not having drug tests as they would have to this charge the entire unit or punish the entire unit. one story that is related to a close friend of mine that is in the core, i was a journalist at this point this former marine with a donor when the test came along he was clean and he would donate to his friends. he would donate so that his friends wouldn't get hammered by the rules. but while they were very common on the battlefield they were mostly isolated to the afghans and this creates the situations where on the one hand we have something like a zero-tolerance

policy for our force but our allies are openly actively, extensively using it. talk about the drug's afterwards marijuana has a significant place in the conversation now the population the government serves what i mean by that is the veterans come home and they go to the va and many of the veterans of a number of problems in which substances whether illicitly abstained or prescribed are seen as a part of the common remedy. the va will prescribe the manner of drugs to the former rank-and-file. but because marijuana is a schedule one controlled

substance, federally o the va cannot administer marijuana even though the jurisdiction many live in states like rhode island but that medical marijuana programs that make it quite accessible. and they will not deny care to someone that is using marijuana but they cannot be involved in the prescription which predates pretty disheartening circumstances for many veterans. i know many that live in states that don't have medical marijuana coming and they risk legal action going out and getting it on the street. i'm not here to say that marijuana is necessarily a universal panacea because many of the inflections they suffer when they come home. the science is mixed and some people find it helpful where others don't. it's hard to get a regulated just write in a way that consistently produces

pharmaceutical products. because the product is the same from event to event or booster dose. it's deeply confusing for veterans that they are heavily prescribed for the opiates and other drugs but they do not have counseling on the use of medical marijuana with many that alleviate the symptoms and i would add t that opiates and veterans have shown that can lead to twice the rate of overdose among the population so it is a fair question to say how responsible this is for the administration and care of the veterans when they have this access and you could argue encouragement to use opiates which they feel with some justification and data is much more dangerous and my ten minutes are up. [applause]

first of all i have to say i'm very happy to be here today. i graduated here and it is fantastic to be home. i am honored to be commenting on the book today. his work had an intellectual influence on me and on the work they do so needless to say i like the book and i've always admired the ability he has to tackle questions in a simple language and i think that is very clear this is a work of a public intellectual and i think that is something that collectivize is your work and this book also builds on and continues things that haven't

been explored and there are three main parts that end up appearing. first is the call to go back to history and that is such an important thing because they tend to exaggerate anything that has to do with the markets and drugs such to history and show. the second point that is part of his work and appears here again it's played such an important role in creating and re-creating superstate is very important and

essential again because when we think of the markets today we think of nonstate actors into something that is isolated and the work i think has been influential for many people like me to really think about the states and as immersed. the third element. all of those elements i think that this book is taking on questioning the non- conventional wisdom and it's the way we think of the literature

they are talking about the war and how after the end of the collapse of the soviet union would we have seewehave seen isf this type of war mostly non- states tend to be brutal and regulated, irrational and motivated by profit and it's the idea of many that we see in spite of the states were mostly because of this province and its taking on the literature by telling us it isn't just about the nonstate actors and it's not just about these countries and

that is a key part of the book. so the connection is very old and multifaceted. and not only today but [inaudible] it challenges us to think about more like cocaine and in some ways, coffee is the one that seems to be like they all live bird in this book because those are drugs that have like bigger psychoactive effects but it's

able to convince that it's bad and it's expanded and connected to the warmaking and it's becoming widespread after. it's so fascinating how basically it comes much more popular and that's a fascinating story and one that pushes us to think that it belongs in this history because it is a psychoactive substance that has expanded so it's important to show in certain places it can

also be a source of the war through drugs. one of the most fascinating chapters on every chapter in the book is fascinating but the chapter on methamphetamine there is so much there that is new and interesting. especially in world war ii and in that history i think having been told until now the comparison between cocaine come methamphetamines isn't asking. one thing i found fascinating

reading the book is cocaine and methamphetamine are similar in many regards. in some ways you can see they sy are comparable in the types of effect they create on the users and they are also compatible in the sense that there is not as much widespread usage. so right after world war ii but the state of cocaine is being illegal and becoming successful as a market anticipated from the state. why do you think that is the case because i don't think there's some potential there is some potential explanation but it's not straightforward. there's more influence from the pharmaceutical companies but

they also played an important role so that is a really interesting question that came up to me when i was reading the book. this is something that echoes the role of the state regulating it. i think it is always useful when we are thinking about these markets, said he chose in many ways how they always ended up being unsuccessful but it's more than that.

there is a strong pushback also from the people that are profiting from this markets and it takes us to today thinking there is so much in the reform now but we could talk mostly about marijuana and there is a reason for that. as much as i was reading the book like we have this entire history at th but at the same tt doesn't seem that big they can be applied for the heroin and cocaine today so.

knowing what we know about how there is a push for them to move forward because there's not enough force to keep them under control. but that doesn't indicate that his thing to happen to cocaine. or to have an safe would be this interesting to hear about it. another thing that is very interesting in this book is i think they do not focus on the major powers in history and the major war and power. there are some rough and is at different points throughout the book but really it is a history of how they have been a central

part of the story and it is essential because this is what challenges the narrative that we have which is a story of nonstate actors in developing countries but really in the long run so that is a driving force of how they show the cases that appear how you end up choosing the stories because i'm sure you have a lot of stories to choose from. i'm highlighting ideas and also highlighting stories because the pieces of the stories that appear in the book are the kind of saying this is the relationship between the war and drugs and i have to say i love

the idea. i want to close with a question of the nature contribution. i think personally we see how we go back to history and the elements to think. it provides a lot of food for thought and elements to think about how we think the problems are major today.

we can look back to history but we don't care and you look back engaged in these policy discussions and to provide policy recommendations or ideas. i will stop there. thank you. [applause] >> i'm eager to hear more from peter as i'm sure you are so let me make a few brief comments but i was most impressed goes beyond the subject matter of trying to look at history in a different way.

it's a category of research into which this book fits and gives us a way to understand where we've been and where we are now. we understand that drugs are both equal of the war and also the reason for the war. chris used the word hypocrisy and that shines in so many different ways. there's also a tremendous hypocrisy in th the way the government to deagovernments den the one hand and using them as tools for their own political purposes internationally.

it's what's out there for us and how we can get it. this hypocrisy extends to our tolerance and drug traffickers we find a way to make them intoo the theater this and other cities like we bend over backwards to try to pretend you're actually in the democracy for the samdid the same thing hh drug lords. one of the ones i got to know and a leader in the 1980s i will never forget having an interview with noriega and telling him a little bit uncomfortably, but that is my job as a reporter, but there have been many reports you've been deeply involved in aletterd

of the drug enforcement administration and it says dear general noriega, we want to thank you for all the director of the drug enforcement administration. if we all knew noriega was a drug trafficker the dea certainly knew that he had a great game going, he was working for one cartel and when the other cartels would try to use pam on, he would call the dea and they would meanwhile through other channels in the 1980s i remember sitting in nicaragua where i was living then, there were a lot of reports that the

sandinista folks were funding in part by stripping cocaine out and that they were doing the same thing. we didn't have the detailed information to speculate. we have a market running a few miles away. i think those of us to have seen combat understand that the war is much more chaotic than it sometimes seems to be when you're watching it in movies or reading about it. the act of going out and participating in a war finally so many deep instincts and impulses. it's one of the reasons drugs

have become ever more important. the reality of the war is too awful to face. it's important that they be able to face this and it helps to wipe away objections they might have the use of those drugs. it is absolutely true that was a turning point. we moved away from a volunteer army, i'm sorry, from the draft army to a voluntary army this is a big result of drug use in the military.

it's for the government when they want to prosecute the war and it's a lot easier to do so when people are not worried about the draft. i was wondering why peter didn't use sugar as one of the drugs but when i got to the rom part, it was wrapped up in an even larger drug. in my last book i read about the efforts to develop lsd as a weapon of war and they had the idea that they could dump huge amounts of it on enemy populations it was relevant and actually this turned out not to work.

i also think this combination of factors that peter has so brilliantly highlighted in the book still plays out today. i've been told by intelligence officers that were in afghanistan trying to figure out the hunt to have a ninth grade because someone we might want to get. as your intelligence guy is walking through the village, looking to see where there are no cigarette butts outside and it's probably somebody in the taliban. they might have picked up on that by now. maybe they distributed cigarette butts outside of their homes for several decades there have been sanctions and we like to sanction the government so that they cannot freely export or import their economies they are

greatly constricted. there've been two episodes of this i covered in yugoslavia and then again in iraq. to move towards the sources of income and because of sanctions they turned in part to drug trafficking and there is no better example of this in north korea which is a major industrial exporter of illegal drugs and it does so because it isn't able to have other kinds of economic activity. and the building of our economy with the trade from the merchants that provided the capital for all the factories that made new england such a power. in this book i take away a new lens looking at history just to give one example i spent some time thinking about and writing

about iran. people felt they were not respecting their democracy. where did it come from? it came from the 1906 resolution in iran. what set off the constitution aniniran, the tobacco revolt. it is when the british insisted and if they agreed to give the british tobacco company monopoly control over the entire tobacco industry and forbid every iranian fun producing or selling tobacco that an explosion happened even those that refuse to smoke as a result of the religious figures in iran so if you trace it all back to the

crisis in iran. it's how valuable people's insights are that they allow us to find a new lens and for that i really applaud you. thank you. [applause] >> the floor is bin. >> no one told us through the pictures and so forth.

you want us to take home the message that you might have something a little bit more. what would you advise? >> right to the policy implication. >> i have to say of all the things i've written, this is a book where i am more stumped than usual wan but the direct py recommendation is because a radical point would be if you take seriously that you do not want the illicit drugs funding the traffickers with private

armies its drug legalization. it is a conclusion one can reach in this book. i don't go there but it is an understandable avenue event very -- of inquiry. drugs at one point but were not elicit the more illicit drugs becomes the more it is profiteering by the nonstate actors. historically they pay for armies and all sorts of dependence the taliban insurgency and so on so if that's the priority, the war on terror or traffickers were legalization, obviously that debate is much more complicated than that and so cannabis legalization of massachusetts

and elsewhere it helps but it's not the major funder of violence and insertions in the way that cocaine and opium is. is there a second one? i haven't read the book so i don't know everything that's in it. i dbut i do want to congratulate you on parsing the ways in which the wars and the drugs intersect. i have a comment into question. and a question. i was surprised nobody mentioned the basis of the words assassination.

my question goes back to how often are drugs either overt or covert the particular reason for the war in actual nationstates or the equivalent? >> on the first thing you mentioned, it is a famous story i don't include it because there is debate if it is a pure myth that it's part of the folklore so i don't go there because the evidence and the discussion is a mythical story people like to tell. the second question or actually

your main question one of the relationships i unpack and identify as the war for drugs and this is why it's important to distinguish because in the current policy debate i think it overwhelms the importance both historically and today. there's already exceptions but for the most part they've been a facilitator of warfare but the cases that you can point to that's why they went to war is rare so it's the first thing to come to mind a.

ala. all feedback up to the present. it's largely important in places like mexico. it's to support private company with an interesting combination between the state power and private power.

there are new estimates in a different part of the world. but whemanufacturing has been ed so here is what we have got to give you a sense of the correlations. it had only one fourth of the output. by 1860 china was down to 90.7.

it's down to 6.2 in 1900. in the declines as we saw in china and noticing them in they discussed this idea into the decline and a steep economic declinthe steep economicdeclinet caused by the war over drugs.

the case that is remotely close to the extreme case. having said that, i am weary of that unitary causal relationship between the outcomes that you pointed to. the correlation that you teach isn't causation. they the book hits you over the head and at the end of today there is a warning to the readers saying i also don't want you in this analysis. i am weary of saying look what happened during the hundred years after. it is more complicated than that. but it's certainly an important

corporate. it basically became the largest producer and said we can't keep up indian imports of go beyond we will just legalize the stuff and produce ourselve ourselves,y were the largest consumer producer of opium that the economic decline is relative to other places risings is also problematic. but it's certainly a big culprit and it's this psychology of thinking it's paved the way

china led the most sweeping effective war of the world has ever seen basically wiped out opium from china given the previous history and precisely for that reason i moved south to the golden triangle of southeast asia. >> thank you all for sharing. when i heard about the role of n the movement and today we are seeing the research and when it

comes through breakthrough and i left your perspective on how it fits into that discussion. >> i explain in the introduction why i pick certain ones and ignore others. they don't make the cut and for all sorts of reasons you wouldn't imagine, it's not particularly effective on the battlefield. it's never figured out how to tax them and asked you mentioned in some cases it's better than anti-wardrobe that was certainly true of cannabis in the 60s.

it was a mind control drug but that still didn't rise to the level of profitable drugs with these others are. chris mentioned returning gis to the various drugs and coping with the aftermath of the war. there is research showing micro dosing and to be able to use it for medical purposes. i don't know how far that is going to get, but frankly no one would have predicted that the legalization of marijuana so it's possible to actually it's

what you described at the present moment. >> let me ask you to make comparisons that don't involve psychoactive substances. we do talk about the addiction and what are the parallels of this they are both resource related. but maybe there's a different kind of addition. can you draw a parallel between the psychoactive substances in

the war and energy resource of oil and the war and in a diffet kind of commercial product? >> i don't go there in the book. i could make the kind of conclusiothat kind ofconclusiond perhaps i should have. one dimension of the relationship goes for the two ao dimensions you can clearly see it's another example of resources so it is the larger universe of the commodities to generate revenue for the warmaking not an unfamiliar story of hugely important one. so it's the most probable thing

going. in that sense there is a pragmatism. comparing it to the other things you mentioned, social media, there is a terrific -- he is probably one of the better known drug historians with a new book out and it basically does take this big ambitious sweep in terms of the various things we are addicted to including video games and so on. i don't go there, but it's provocative and i certainly recommend it to others, but i do conclude that and i go out on a limb in the las and the last pae

book to say i've talked about these relationships but maybe we should also think of the war itself because some of the psychoactive effects can be considered to the adrenaline rush. that is a case of addiction he basically at the end of the movie was back in suburbia and then he goes every unless. others were journalists who got out and described the rush of the war as a drug that there's plenty of memoirs and genitals describing the effect as the equivalent of addiction.

the question i was holding onto anything to do with addiction science i would be where you fid something else like some other approach clinically or just generally written about. >> he takes it all the way back right back to the present but i wouldn't point to one person as

the sort of addiction expert. there's enormous literature on this. i do know there is a consumer amount of research and it should be more funded in terms of the nature of addiction and the very idea of a vaccine interestingly enough for some a possibility down the road, but i don't have a name for you unfortunately. >> i'm very grateful for that and there is one other the effect of the opium war on china and looking at the cause it seems there's more of if anything it would have been the war and afterwards and by looking at the war as a drug may

be druggy analysis which was found interesting. >> thank you so much. >> maybe we should let the panelists say something. great question why you didn't take off. it's made an appearance during world war ii and there is plenty of evidence of it but then major states turn against pretended, too. he was a big fan and became aware of it because they were testing it on soldiers and thought it was a magical wonder

drug. it is a perfect example is much easier to identify how something changed and that it changed factually versus y. because it is a criminalized status. there were efforts of suggestions. the effects on the raw material is basically very mild and such an anti-drugs that it squashed any research even though for many centuries, peruvian

soldiers found the postings so it does open the door for amphetamines and what's interesting is when they become criminalized in the u.s. in the 1960s, but is actually when cocaine takes off because a lot of people do turn to cocaine recreationally when it's much less available. >> my comment is something you mentioned i agree with the observation of war as a drug and i would say from my perspective, yes it is for people on the battlefield fighting and watching the fighting, though i

also think it is addictive at a higher level for the general, it's addictive for the politicians in such a great political benefits that pays off in so many ways. so it is more pernicious even then the individual board to the peoplor to thepeople seeing it . >> i would invite everybody to read it to still get a deep understanding geopolitics still plays an important role

[inaudible] i am not a historian but a chronicler of the activity and this book is very valuable for that and sort of underlying software experiences. if you want to see the inquiries to observe and document, one of the surefire places to do this, one of the things to look at is in its work against drugs in afghanistan. ..

>> they didn't want to lose people to this and lose a lot of people. and there was the doctrine contradiction and that counter insurgency with the local population which was opium based like tomatoes or melons that it's not perishable. so naturally to be very heavily in the areas with the climate and water access.

or they were to engage as american military does come activities that look like accomplishment but actually are not. when you see the opium fields being burned but those were not even harvested. [laughter] and then they would pay the farmer to let it be burned but you already removed the product it was a farce and a safe patro patrol. and it was common. you could also find very reliable where the opium was grown in places certainly almost grown and that was inside the ground of the afghan police station. [laughter] that's just the way that it was a bring the springs at home really well. >> thank you there are books outside. [applause] >> thank you there is a

reception outside thank you. [applause]