The importance of the relationship between drugs and war of course, i know that the intensity of feelings in china about the century of humiliation that began with opium war t butt the same time its easy for a lot of people, including myself, to think of Something Like the opium ware as may be an anomaly or something very particular to a very particular time and place and i have to say im guilty of thinking about the opium war that way but great scholarship, truly great scholarship, like killer high and a lot of the work done here at the Washington Institute forces us, forces me to see the world in a totally new way this book has forced me and i think it forces all readers to focus on the eternal and incredibly expansive relationship between drugs and war. That relationship extends from war conducted by people who are often on a form of drug and some kind of psychoactive substance and it extends to wars and conquest of drugs or the Raw Materials and extends to wars for markets and for outlets for drugs and of course, as we are all familiar with, wars against drugs but as peter argues so effectively this phenomenon and this interaction between psycho active substances and conflict is laced throughout historynf ad right up to the present. Peter, he makes interesting clnclusions in this book but also raises the number of questions and i think we will have an opportunity to date witt this fantastic panel to delve into some of those questions welch will again emphasize this entirely new lens that peter gives us to see the world. Let me quickly explain how we will proceed and i will ask peter to come up and speak for i ten minutes or so about the book and then i will ask our panelists to comment for ten minutes or so each of the book and then we will open it up in questions and answers. If you will, let me briefly introduce peter and our panelists. Peter andreas is the john hay professor of International Studies here at the Washington Institute and the department of Political Science. He is the author or coauthor, coeditorsh of 11 books and that includes of course, killer high but also the 2013 book smuggler nation how Illicit Trade made america or as quite relevant today, as we talk about we live in a world of trade frictions and talk about piracy and make claims about a variety of countries v, illicit activities. Next to speak will be chris [inaudible] pulitzer prizewinning longform writer and journalist from the New York Times and im sure all of you are familiar with his work in a big fan and he smirked at the New York Times since 1999 in his career as a Foreign Correspondent has focused on conflict regions, spanning afghanistan, iraq, palestinian territories, chechnya,ni libya d syria amonger others. Chris also served as marine corps infantry man, combat veteran from the first gulf war, persian gulf war and next to speak will be [inaudible] martin is who is associate professor of Political Science at the university of massachusetts lowell. She is the 2013 phdic recipients from brown and she is a noted expert on latin american and comparative politics but with a particular emphasis on organized crime and criminality and illicit markets and the relationship between state actors and nonstate actors, often nonstate actors. Shes the author of the awardwinning 2018 book, the politics and drug violence criminal cops and politicians in columbia and mexico that was from Oxford University press. Steven kinzer, well known to everyone here, senior fellow at the Washington Institute and of course, an awardwinning journalist whogt over the course of his career covered more than 50 countries on five continents and steven spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times and is a Foreign Correspondent bureau chief and among his numerous claim books include the 2019 volume poison are in chief. Obviously topical for the discussion today. With that, let me turn the microphone over to peter andreas. [applause] thank you all for coming. If you aree here because you think this is about the made for tv dvd, killer hi, sorry to disappoint you. I am sure that dvd has and will outsell my book tradeha genre fr that i believe listed on amazon is Horror Comedy so my book is definitely horror and theres not a lot of b comedy in it andn fact, the title was not my selection but my choice for title originally was the subtitle of the book, a history of waras in a six drugs but let me give you a few highlights of the book. When i try to do in the mirror 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 who end up reading the book will not quite think of war again in the same way and you wont quite think of drugs in the same way. In fact, id like to get into the drugs and war together and over time it became quite addicted to each other. A oneliner made drugs made war and drugs [inaudible] they seem to be treated separately so i systematically try to tie them together across time and across place and across psychoactive substance and the motivation for the book was not history but to bring history into what i consider a policy debate that suffers from a severe case of historical amnesia c, a debate about the socalled nexus between drugs and conflict. We talked today about narco states in the first thing that comes to mind is afghanistan. We think about narco insurgents or narco terrorists and we think about columbia and afghanistan iaagain. Look at this issue from a much deeperer historical sweep, going back not just years and decades but centuries and the first true narco state was probably Great Britain. The first, in fact, Great Britain was the first narco empire if you think about the sheer importance of alcohol taxes and the importance of the tea trade and thats a powerful drug and im addicted to it and i mean caffeine. With the importance of the opioid tradeff for the rise of britain as the worlds most maritime power. In fact, narco insurgents, yes, its the tale of man but it was also George Washington. Why do i say George Washington . Well, that conflict very much depended on revenueon generatedy tobacco. In fact, got a loan from france based on tobacco revenue and the brits were so upset about it they burned tobacco fields whenever they found them. I including tobacco fields owned by thomas jefferson. So what i tried to do in this book is systematically unraveled and interrogate, unpack the relationship between drugs and war and i find there are five relationships. What is more while on drugs literally combating drug use in wartime . But not just combatants but also on the homefront as well drug use by civilians dealing with the coping with wartime. Obviously war is stressful work and no surprise that drugs help soldiers cope and they also help them celebrate victories and prepare for battle and give them liquid courage after all. I also talk about more through drugs my totally different than the war on drugs but more through drugs means using drugs primarily to fund war that ranges from alcohol and tobacco taxes to cocaine and opium revenue. The full gamut from illicit 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 drugsth which is distinct from the first tto breed more for drugs is goig to war over drug markets and as ed mentioned the most famous case of this, of course, opium wars of the mid 19th century where 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 whats going on in mexico today. More people have died in mexico since late 2006 that have died in iraq and afghanistan combin combined. Drug violence that although security analysts are reluctant to call it orta, if you look at the sheer number of casualties and if you look at how well armed the perpetrators are using military grade equipment the actors themselves are often militarily trained and often defectors from the military and in one case, u. S. Trained antidrug force turned into a drug hit squad. Drug trafficking organizations and then you think about the state itself has deployed this military and a frontline role in fighting drugs with mexican military is essentially a an antidrug force at this point. Then its not just mexico but columbia to some extent and brazil to some extent and even the United States since the 1980s has loosened the [inaudible] act which restricted the use of u. S. Military for long purposes and very much embedded in the war on drugs. At the border and beyond and through militarized policing in our own communities, swat teams were exempted before the war on drugs but it really took off and this is using military technologies often ask military personnel and approaches to fighting a substance. Then there is the war against drugs which is closely related than the war for drugs but we are against drugs and it started as a metaphor. Nixon declared war against drugs but he did not actually send in troops to fight drugs but since the 1980s its become progressively more militarized so we could call it an outrage war. Last but not least and this is probably the research of the book the most surprised me is drugs after war, how much war itself left a Lasting Legacy in terms of drug production, trafficking, regulation and drug tastes have been fundamentally altered thanks to wars in ways we often dont give war credit for. Just to give you a few examples, why are we a a coffee drinker rather than 18 drinking nation . Because we want the American Revolution and the brits went on with tea and we turn to coffee. We not c only turn to coffee but turned to whiskey. Rum was thefe drink of choice produced here and rum long island rhode island and it kept things going in massachusetts and whiskey became the alcoholic beverage of choice and was a national drink and no longer needed imports from abroad but considered patriotic to turn to whiskey. Turn against that british drink, ron. Turn against that british rink, t. That drinks we take for granted a result of war. The very criminalization of cocainehe is a product of world war ii, very few people remember that cocaine is legally produced by japanese pharmaceutical companies. The destruction of those fields and the destruction of the japanese pharmaceuticale is a part of the u. S. Victory. U. S. Turned against cocaine much earlier of course but wasnt only with the victory of japan that the u. S. [inaudible] but the globalizeds preference for cocaine prohibitions so cocaine was one of the biggest losers, legal cocaine was one of the biggest losers of world war ii. Illegal cocaine decades later was arguably one of the biggest winners. So there is the five relationships. I want to tell you a bit in the few minutes i have what the six key drugs are and ive already given you hints because i mentioned some of them. The oldest most multipurpose and arguably double edged of the drugs is alcohol. It goes back and its too dear and wine and then the distilling revolution really did indeed revolutionize things. About just think about why france is the worlds most famous wine producing region in the world . The roman conquest brought wine to france. Bordeaux was set up as a port by the romans and after the romans retreated and pushed back wine endured in france. The distilling resolution was absolutely essential to the conquest of the new world and think about the importance of alcohol as an ethnic cleanser and westward expansion. I fact, alcohol became so important that it was actually no rations on both sides of the American Revolution paid after the revolution whiskey became part of u. S. Military rations. In fact, the british, believe it or not, had rum at rations until hee early 1970s on their naval ships. Second drug, tobacco. Once it arrivediv equally potent and in fact, not only the downsides of alcohol but alcohol basically you can raise revenue but you also might have a drunk military. The czar was 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 both anxiety and boredom, relieves, is highly taxable and does not impede performance, even if it might eventually kill you. The globalization of tobacco is intimately also about the spread of warfare. Soldiers globalized warfare and the very motive of Tobacco Consumption was closely influenced by war so wide to be turned away from hookahs and pipes to cigars and cigarettes to increasingly portable, easy to produce to move and this was intimate story of war. In fact, cigarettes by the time world war iie came around was te most valued ration in cigarette or soldier rations. Third, caffeine. My drug of choice and im completely addicted to the stuff. Its the most worlds most popular psychoactive substance and but certainly far from a benign relationship to war arguably stimulated imperial expansion and i mentioned the British Empire of tea but then we have the rise of caffeinated soldiers and its fascinating but in thedi case of the u. S. Civil war coffee is mentioned in soldier diaries more often than gone, cannon or rifle coffee is this 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 the coffee break was introduced for defense workers through world war ii and then outlived world war ii and institutionalized 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 and monster and so on. Fourth, opium. Ed mentioned opium wars are an extreme case of the relationship between war and drugs which is more for drugs. Imperial wars but also the Japanese Imperial occupational of china. There is no way japan in the late 1930s it could its occupation of china without narcotics. Amphetamines and extreme case of war while on drugs and some said speed is the essence of war but he did not mean and petty means. He would be pretty impressed at how important amphetamines were to keep soldiers on many sides going during world war ii. In the last but not least cocaine. The extreme case of war against drugs which ive already said a few things about. I will start stop there and turn things over to chris. [applause] thank you, peter. I would 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 ive used up two ink pens is probably a sign its a hell of a book. I was in a lucky reader and peter got me a copy over smiths 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 go here and dont understand and maybe a set of narratives that are relatablesi and analyses that can make you as you said, we imagine the world and understand it a new and in this case the world of wr and that was my experience of it but i dont want to talk about history, at least not distant history. Ot i want to talk more about now and some more recent observations since the persian gulf war of the 1990s, 91 and the socalled as the military calls it, global war on terror since 2001 and bringing the events that peter has related up to the present time. Are there any recent veterans in the room . Any . No, maybe well good, one . Hopefully there will be some on cspan and you can fact check to me. I welcome you to comment afterward. We talk about or peter talks about the book and in his remarks the place that various substances have on the battlefield in the battlefield of the era we live in now have changed a bit from modern conventional military speed wars become so technical and the military commands have become, in some cases, so politically sensitive 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 level but at the unit level when deployed in alcohol i will not call it nonexistent because its not but its almost invisible and its quite rare and very unusual to see alcohol on the battlefield did some of this is because of the words as we have had them since 2001 and since gulf war in fact have often played out among islamic populations and there is a sensitivity to having the military make the social faux pas of just call in a country where they have been tough cases invited and in other cases occupied but in any case hoping to get along with the population better than what the otherwise might. There is still alcohol on the battlefield but you wont see much of it. Youve got to look great when i was in the 80s and 90s there were among the troops i was in the marine infantry these things called snakebite kids. It was a euphemism and a joke and it was people would have sent it to them as perhaps with a little bourbon in it but it was quite guarded and very obvious because as you know, most everyone here has some sort of relationship with alcohol and its hard to hide alcohol use. The odor. I remember one snakebite kit being broken out on a warship i was on but they literally locked the doors and someone said i just got bit by a snake and pulled out a bottle and everyone got shots and thatot was it. In a ten month deployment but there was not much alcohol there ll all. But, there are many other drugs out there and theres a deep hypocrisy that you would see in how the military, our military and western military in general relate with drugs in their own forces versus into their allied forces in what i mean by that is since the failed hostage rescue attempt late in the Carter Administration in which drug use was given part of the blame for the failure for the mechanical failure of the aircraft and there was a story that circulated in the military in the years after that a sailor had been smoking pot in a hangar deck and it caused a small fire in a garbage can and this activated the spengler system which had sprayed saltwater on some of the aircraft and this was considered perhaps the culprit in one of the aircraft failure