Drugs, Crime, and Corruption: Thinking the Unthinkable

In an attempt to expose the links between crime, drugs, corruption, and terrorism throughout the world, expert Richard Clutterbuck here provides a profile of drug use world-wide. Drawing on the dramatic examples of Peru and Colombia as case-studies, the book describes in detail the manufacture and distribution of cocaine, crack, heroin, cannabis, speed, ice, and LSD. An entire chapter is devoted to chronicling how the $500 billion a year that is paid for these drugs - more than the GDP of all but the world's seven richest nations - is efficiently laundered. Solutions lie, Clutterbuck argues, not in Latin America or Asia, but on the streets of the West. At a time when policies of suppression and prohibition are faltering and when the War on Drugs is widely seen as having failed, Clutterbuck weighs the pros and cons of the alternatives: What would need to be done to make prohibition work? Should some drugs be decriminalized? How effective has the Dutch experiment been? Is the licensing of drugs to cure addictions an effective remedy? Should certain drugs be licensed like alcohol and tobacco? An international security and political risk consultant, Richard Clutterbuck is the author of numerous books, including Terrorism in an Unstable World and Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare. In 1994, he spent ten days in Peru, advising the armed forces and visiting the main coca-growing area in the Huallaga Valley.