Between 2006 and 2021, the war on drugs left almost 300,000 dead and 100,000 missing in Mexico. Instead of presenting a romanticized account of drug trafficking and drug barons, Adèle Blazquez analyses the conditions of life in a rural municipality affected by armed violence.
Initially designed to protect the population, public health systems can lead to demands being made for personal rights. This process is illustrated by an unexpected comparison between the legalisation of abortion and the provision of drug consumption rooms.
Every year in the United States around 650,000 people are released from prison, many of them destined to return. Bruce Western and his research team followed 122 released prisoners over a one-year period.
Launched over a century ago, the war on drugs has been a resounding failure. Not only has it increased trafficking, but it has also reinforced drug use and drug production while cracking down on drug users and peasant producers. The time has come to promote coherent projects of alternative development.
It could be time, in France, to re-open the debate on drug legalization. Criminalization of drug use and distribution has shown its limits, and unlike other countries nothing has really been done to provide a legal framework to drug use.
In an unusual genre between fieldwork account and memoir, Sudhir Venkatesh proposes a sociological exploration of the informal economy of New York City. His ethnography of drug-dealers and sex-workers constitutes an occasion for him to reflect upon the limitations of “academic sociology”.
Opium was a constant feature of the power struggles which affected Republican China, and is often perceived as one of the main social problems of the period. Xavier Paulès’ complete re-assessment of the issue is thought-provoking, and he challenges a number of received ideas in his monograph on the town of Canton.
American sociologist Howard Becker stands out for his rejection of theory and his attachment to ethnographical observation of worlds in which he is himself an actor. One of his key lessons to sociologists is that they should ask “how” rather than “why”.
Eminem, like millions of Americans, just strolls down to his local pharmacist. Thus at a time when the country is questioning its future state of health, the inspired artist exposes the hidden panacea of American society and throws a glaring spotlight on the issue of drug addiction in America today.
