chapter 3
Raw Materialism Exporting Drug Control to the Andes1
The unequal position in which nations found themselves with regard to access and participation in the international drug trade in the aftermath of World War II depended on more than the promotion of an ideology and economic model to advance and justify US global preeminence. It entailed the rigorous design and enforcement of an international policing apparatus. The US government sought to ensure the access of pharmaceutical manufacturers to the raw materials flowing from the global South into US pharmaceutical laboratories, and to promote the consumption and reexport of US mass-produced drugs. This required a concerted effort to implement an effective international drug control regime, including an often contested determination to revise laws and cultural practices in those nations where valuable drug agricultural crops were cultivated. While over the subsequent decades marijuana and an array of synthetic drugs came under the purview of drug control officials, initially the two primary raw materials targeted by regulators included the poppy plant and the coca leaf, used for manufacturing opiates, cocaine, and Coca-Cola. The production of opium involved an international network of economic, military, and political interests invested in a commodity chain spreading raw material from Southeast Asia and the Middle East into Europe and the United States (where it was transformed into pharmaceutical painkillers). The coca commodity chain, on the other hand, was more exclusively situated within a US imperial domain due to the fact that the principal geographic location of coca leaf cultivation was 97
