ABSTRACT
As illustrated above for much of the twentieth century different U.S. governments have promoted prohibitionist drug control policies focused upon the destruction of illegal drug production, drug interdiction, and the arrest/killing of cartel leaders. This prohibitionist campaign was escalated and militarized beginning in the 1980s coinciding with a social structure of accumulation in which market liberalization and increasing “surplus populations” were marginalized through greater criminalization, incarceration, and drug war repression. For much of the administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001) drug policy continued this prohibitionist mission, repeatedly enacting politically advantageous “get tough” on crime bills that were fully supported by a “narco-enforcement complex” that mushroomed during the Reagan and Bush administrations (Bertram et al. 1996, 116–127). Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative were striking examples of the ratcheting up of U.S. foreign drug control policy.
