Humiliation that began about 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 like an anomaly or something very particular to very particular timer and place and i have to stand guilty of thinking about the opium war thatbo way. But great scholarship, truly great scholarship like killer hi, a lot of work that is done at the Lawson Institute forces us and me to see the world in a totally new way. This book has forced me and enforces all readers to really focus on the internal and incredibly expansive relationship between drugs and war. That relationship extends from work conducted by people who were often on a form of drug, some kind of psychoactive substance and it extends towards an conquest of drugs or the raw material for drugs and it extends to wars for markets and for outlets of drugs and of course were all familiar with wars against drugs. But as peter argued so effectively, this phenomenon, this interaction between psychoactive substances is in conflict is least throughout history and right up to the present. Peter makes a number of interesting questions and raises a number of questions. We will have an opportunity with a fantastic panel to dive into the questions which will emphasize this entirely new lens that peter gives us to see theti world. Let me quickly explain how we will proceed. Im going to ask peter to come up and speak for ten minutes about the book and then i will ask her panelist each to comment for ten minutes on the book and then well open it up to questions and answers. If you let me briefly introduce peter in her panelist, Peter Andreas is a professor of International Studies in the department of Political Science. He is the author and coauthor of 11 books including a killer i but also the 2013 book smuggler nation how trade made america were quite relevant today we talk about we live in a world of trade friction and talk about piracy and make claims about a variety of countries and listed activities. Chris who is a New York Times novelist. Im a big fan. He worked at the New York Times since 1999, his career as a Foreign Correspondent has esfocused on conflict region spanning afghanistan, the palestinian, libya and syria among others. Chris also served as a marine corps infantry men in combat veteran in the persian war. Next to speak will be angelica drawn martinez, the university of massachusetts, she is a 2013 phd recipient from brown and she is a noted expert, latin american and comparative politics with a particular emphasis on organized crime and criminology, illicit market and the relationship between state actors and nonstate actors, often are nonstate, she is the author of the awardwinning 2018 book the politics of drug violence, criminal cops and politicians in columbia andwi c mexico. That was from Oxford University press. And Stephen Kinzer the senior fellow at the Lawson Institute and an awardwinning journalist who over the course of his career covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Stephen spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times in a Foreign Correspondent and bureau chief in among his numerous claim books include the 2019 volume poison are in chief in the cia search for my control. Obviously topical for the discussion today. 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 madefortv dvd, killer hi, sorry to disappoint you, im sure that dvd has and will outsell my book, the genre for that listed on amazon is horror comedy. [laughter] so my book is deathly horror, there is not a lot of comedy in it. In the title killer high has grown on me, my choice was the subtitle, history of war in six drugs. Let me give you a few highlights of the book, what i tried to do in the meal 300 some pages is retell the history of warfare through the lens of drugs and retell the history of drugs through the lens of war and hopefully for those of you who end up reading the book, you b will not quite think of warqu again in the same way and you wont think of drugs in the same way. In fact invite to convince you that drugs and war live together ted over time became quite addicted to each other. One would be drugs made more and war made drugs. These two things tend to be treated quite separately and when literature on work and drugs is systematically trying to tie them together across time, across place in a crossed 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 severe case of amnesia, a debate about the socalled nexus between drugs and conflict. We talked about narco state and the first thing that comes to mind is afghanistan, we think about narco insurgents or narco terrorist and we think about columbia and maybe afghanistan. But look at this issue from a much deeper historical state going back not just yearsca b ad decades for 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, the importance of a tea tray, thats a powerful drug, im addicted to, can think, not nicotine. In the importance of the opium trade for the rise of britain of maritime power. In fact, narco insurgents, yes its the taliban but its also george washington, why do i say george washington, that conflict very much depended on revenue generated by tobacco. In the loan from france based on tobacco revenue and the brits were so upset they burned tobacco fields whenever they found them. Including tobacco fields owned by thomas jefferson. So what i tried to do in the book is systematically unravel interrogate and unpack the relationship between drugs and war. I actually find there are five relationships, what is war on drugs literally combat drug use in wartime not just combat but also on the homefront as well, drug use by civilians dealing with coping with wartime. Obviously war is stressful work, no surprise that drugs help soldiers cope and help them celebrate victories and prepare for battle, they give them liquid courage after all. I also talk about war through drugs, totally different than war while on drugs. Using drugs primarily to fund war that ranges from tobacco taxes to cocaine and opium revenue, the full gamut from illicit to illicitt drugs. Natural to semi synthetic to fully synthetic drugs. From the most benign to the most dangerous psychoactive substances. There are four drugs which is distinct from the two, going to war over drug markets and is and mentioned the most famous case of this are the opium wars of the mid19th centuryhe were britain forced opium onto china through the barrel of a gun. But it goes all the way up to the present if we think about what is going on in mexico, more people died in mexico since late 2006 that have 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 perpetrators are using military grade equipment, the actors themselves are often militarily trained in defectors from the military and in one case u. S. Trained antidrug force turned into a drug hit squad for Drug Trafficking organizations and then you think about the state itself has deployed his military in a frontline world infighting drugs, the mexican military is essentially antidrug force at this point. Many states not just mexico but columbia to some extent and also brazil and even the United States since the 1980s has loosened which restricted the use of the u. S. Military for Law Enforcement purposes. Now very much embedded in the war on drugs at the border and beyond and also militaries policing in our swat teams, swat teams were invented before the war on drugs but took off, this is using military technology, x military personnel and approaches to fighting the substance. There is a war against drugs which is closely related but distinct than war for drugs, war against drugs started with a metaphor. Nixon declared war againstin drugs, he actually sent in troops to fight drugs. But since 1980s it is become progressively more militarized so we can actually call it an outright war and last but not least, this is probably the research that most surprised me is drugs i after war, how much were itself left a Lasting Legacy of trafficking l regulatn drug taste had been fundamentally altered thanks to wars and ways that we often dont give more credit w for. Just to give you a few examples, why are we coffee drinking the tea drinking nation. Because we won the American Revolution. Th the brits went on with tea, we turn to coffee. Not only do we turn to coffee, we turn to whiskey rome was the drink of choice before the American Revolution and distilleries which have rhode island going including massachusetts and whiskey became the alcoholic beverage of choice and was a national drink and no longer needed imports and it was considered patriotic and turned to whiskey turned against the british drink tea. So the very taste that we take for granted are a 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 in the destruction of the japanese pharmaceutical is part of the u. S. Victory in world war ii, the u. S. Turned against cocaine much earlier but it was not only with the victory of japan when the u. S. Was able to globalize its preference for cocaine prohibitions. Cocaine was one of the biggest losers of world war ii. Illegal cocaine, decades later was arguably one of the biggest winners. Those are the five relationships, now i want to tell you in the few minutes that i have what the six key drugs, averted giving you hints because they mentionon some. The oldest most multipurpose and double edge of the drugs 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 in the world, is a conquest what brought wine to france, urdu was set up by the romans and after the romans retreated or pushed back wine indoors in france. The distilling revolution is absolutely essential to the conquest of the new world, think about the importance of alcohol as a cleanser in the westward expansion. In fact hard alcohol became so important that it was actually rationed on both sides of the market revolution, after the revolution whiskeyafaf became pt of u. S. Military rations and infect the british believe it or not had rum rations until the early 1970s until th on their nl ships. Second drug tobacco, arrives much later than alcohol but once it arrives equally potent and in fact none of the doubt sit downf alcohol, alcohol you can a raise revenue but you might have a drink military. But they were able to finance the largest army in europe with vodka revenue but his soldiers were drunk, tobacco is the ideal war drug, highly affordable, fights anxiety and boredom, relieves highly taxable and does not impede performance even though if it might eventually killll you. The globalization of tobacco is intimately also about the spread of warfare. Soldiers mobilize warfare in the very motive Tobacco Consumption was closely influenced by war, so why do we turn away from pipes and who because two cigars and cigarettes to increasingly portable easily to produce, to move, this is the intimate story of war and in fact cigarettes by the time world war ii came around was the most value ration in soldier rations. Third, caffeine. My drug of choice, im completely addicted to the stuff. Its the most popular psychoactive substance but certainly far from a benign relationship to war, arguably stimulated in expansion and i mentioned the British Empire of tea but then we have the rise of caffeinated soldiers, its fascinating in the case of u. S. Civil war, coffee is mentioned in soldier diaries more often than gun, cannon or c rifle. Coffee is a central ingredient to keep soldiers going. Instant coffee was an instant hit on the battlefield in world war ii and outlived world war ii. But the coffee break was actually w introduced for defene 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 the military bases are hyper caffeinated beverages like red bull and monster and so on. Opium, as i mentioned opium wars are an extreme case of the relationship between war and drugs which is war for drugs, imperial wars but also Japanese Imperial occupation of china. There is no way that japan in the late 1930s could fund its occupation in china without narcotics. Amphetamines in extreme case of war while on drugs, some said speed is the essence of war, he did not mean amphetamines but he would be impressed of how important and feta means were to keep soldiers on many sides going during world war ii and last but not least,g cocaine. The extreme case l of war againt drugs which i early said a few things about, i will stop there and turn things over to chris. [applause] thank you peter. I will open with complements. 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 used up two ink pens is probably a sign its a hell of a s book. I was a lucky reader, peter got me a copy over christmas and i spent the holidays with it. Its a work of history as you just heard, history is an act of making diverse and sometimes divergent sources cohere to an understanding and a set of narratives that are relatable and analyses that can make you as you said reimagine the world and understand it. This case the world of war, that was my experience but i dont want to talk about history, at least not distant history, i want to talk about now in more w observation since the persian gulf war of 1990 and 91 in the socalled as the military calls the global war on terror since 2001 and bring the events that peter has related up to the present time. Are there any recent veterans in the room . Any . One, hopefully there will be someone cspan and you can fact check me, i will welcome you to comment afterward. We talk about peter talks about in the book and in his remarks the place that very substances have on the battlefield. The battlefield of this arrow that we live in now have changed a bit from modern conventional military, wars become so technical and the military commands have become and so politically insensitive that some of the longstanding drugs on 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 individual in the unit level when deployed, alcohol i market to call it nonexistent because it is not but its almost invisible, it is quite rare and very unusual to see alcohol on the battlefield. Some is because of the wars as we had since 2001 in the gulf war have often played out among islamic population. And there is a sensitivity to having the military make the social justine alcohol in a country where they have been in some cases invited another cases occupied hoping to get along with the population better than what they otherwise might. There is still alcohol on the battlefield but you will not see much, you have to look. When i was in the 80s and 90s there were among the troops, i was in the marine infantry, there were snakebite kits which was a euphemism, a joke and people would set shampoo bottles with bourbon and it but it was quite guarded, it was very obvious as you know because most everyone here has some sort of relationship with alcohol, its very hard to hide alcohol use, the odor. I remember one snakebite kit being broken on the worship but they lock l the doors and someoe said i just got bit by a [bleep] snake and pulled out a bottle and everybody got a couple of shots and that was it. And a ten month deployment. There was not much alcohol there at all. But there are many other drugs outth there. There is a a deep hypocrisy that you would see in how the military and western militaries in general relate with drugs in their own forces versus into their allied forces and what i mean by that sense of failed hostage attempt in the Carter Administration in which drug use was given part off the blame for the failure, the mechanical failure of the aircraft, there was a story in the years after that the sailor had been smoking pot and a hanger deck and cause the small fire in ait garbage cn and it said activated this spengler system in considered a culprit on the mission and whether the story is correct i havent done the research to tell you but it was widely trafficked and as a result it had gone through a service that coming out of vietnam i use marijuana very heavily and now had drug testing routines, sometimes randomized and they would do things like take a unit and pull numbers out of a hat to in savior Social Security ends in five or seven then you have to report for the first sgt for urinalysis. It was not quite zerotolerance, you were given two chances but you would be crossing under prosecuted 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 and in our force , and the western forces, when you go to the battlefield now, you would find them maybe heavily using and you said your book is horror over comedy, some of the scenes i saw in afghanistan they would qualify, there would be tense alongside each other with americans in one of the Afghan Partner in the other and the americans would be dippinge copenhagen which is tobacco stuff that taste like how stric entering how [bleep] s very popular in handsfree and smoke was so they could take it on patrols and operate a vehicle or rifle in a radio hand you dont have to fumble with matches. It is immensely popular. Everyone in the american tent like to use tobacco and they were immensely popular. In the afghan time, literally smoke billowing out from his sheesh marijuana. It was universal