Providing a picture of US involvement with international drug control from its inception to 1997, this book charts the American quest to internationalise the doctrine of drug prohibition, revealing its origins, motivation and methodologies, as well as contradictions and inconsistencies. Bewley-Taylor explores how the US successfully exploited hegemonic superiority in 1945 to influence the philosophy of the multilateral drug control system operated by the UN. He illuminates the dynamics underlying Washington's frequent subordination of international anti-drug measures to security concerns...

There remains substantial agreement among the international community on many aspects of the contemporary UN drug control regime. However, diverging views on the non-medical and non-scientific use of a range of controlled substances make drug policy an increasingly contested and transitionary field of multinational cooperation. Employing a fine-grained and interdisciplinary approach, this book provides the first integrated analysis of the sources, manifestations and sometimes paradoxical implications of this divergence. The author develops an original explanatory framework through which to...