Drugs and Thugs

“Densely and colorfully detailed as well as politically informed and astute. Crandall’s writing throughout is knowing and witty. His candid policy assessment is both forceful and nuanced.” —Jonathan Stevenson, Senior Fellow for US Defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies

“The national challenge of substance abuse disorder fueled by opioids has thrust the Drug War back into the newspapers and onto policymaking agendas. Drugs and Thugs distills the decades of experience and hard lessons learned into remarkably readable and endlessly informative fashion. This is required reading.”—Denis McDonough, former White House Chief of Staff, Notre Dame University

“Russell Crandall is one of our sharpest scholars of the U.S.-Latin America relationship. In this book, he tackles complex and controversial subjects, and his conclusions will be sure to provoke people on all sides of the debate. But this book is essential precisely because it challenges so many common conceptions about America's War on Drugs.”—Hal Brands, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)