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 im 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 well 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, hes the author and coauthor 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, im sure many of you are familiar with his work, i am a big fan, hes 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 awardwinning 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 awardwinning 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, im 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, theres 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 wont 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 socalled 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, thats a powerful drug, its called caffeine. Or the importance of the opium trade for the rise of britain and maritime. In fact narco insurgents, yes its 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 mid19th 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 worlds 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 its 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 theres 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, im completely addicted to the stuff, its 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 didnt 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 ive already said a few things about. I will stop there and turn things over to chris. [applause] im 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 ive used it to ink pens it is a good sign its 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 dont 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 socalled 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 longstanding 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. Im not going to call his nonexistent but its almost invisible and quiet where to see it on the battlefield. Some of this is because of the war as weve 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 wont 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 cant 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 wasnt 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 wasnt 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 dont have to fumble with matches and so it is immensely popular. Everyone would likely be using it and some things were immensely popular. Its 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 wouldnt see marijuana growing but if you were in the spirit dated steps you would see the massive marijuana fields patrolling. Its 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 wouldnt 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 zerotolerance policy for our force but our allies are openly actively, extensively using it. Talk about the drugs 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 rankandfile. 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 dont have medical marijuana coming and they risk leg