Nixon-Era Drug Literature: Surprisingly Dope
McCoy, Pekkanen, and Szasz saw through the bullshit and warned future generations
[Continued from “Veblen on the Drug Habits of the Elite.”]
Interest in the social meanings of drug use increased sharply in the 20th century with the rise of the global paradigm of prohibition. Scholars fused the rapidly growing fascination with drugs and the advanced economic analysis of Marx and others. The volume of literature picked up noticeably after Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs. The early 1970s saw a slew of texts that helped radically reshape popular discourse around drug politics.
In 1971, the same year Nixon’s Controlled Substances Act took effect, a graduate student at Yale who occasionally dabbled in heroin took a semester off to try to find out where his drug of choice actually came from. His name was Alfred McCoy, and the journey he embarked on ultimately took him deep into the Golden Triangle. It also nearly cost him his life.
McCoy’s arduous firsthand investigation resulted in a book that became a key milestone in the development of drug scholarship. Working with others, McCoy wrote The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which dove deep into not just the heroin trade but the broader political history of opium. McCoy’s text is a seminal piece of drug history and represents a true turning point in the field. Notably for our purposes, it was one of the first books to expose (in great detail) the numerous links between various factions of the United States government, the Mafia, and the Triads who distribute Golden Triangle heroin (and now fentanyl, ketamine, and methamphetamine) around the world.
McCoy’s research was published in 1972. The following year, a journalist and bureau chief at Life magazine named John Pekkanen published another book that exposed corruption among government officials involved with the drug trade—but in this case, the legal pharmaceutical industry. The American Connection: Profiteering and Politicking in the “Ethical” Drug Industry is not as well-known as McCoy’s text but it is of equal value for our review of trailblazing drug literature. Examining links between Congress, the pharmaceutical industry, and a particularly well-connected CIA-officer-turned-private-attorney, Pekkanen’s exhaustive research revealed the realpolitik of pharmaceutical regulation in the US, which, as many are now well aware, is shaped primarily by corporate interest rather than public health needs.
Another text from the early ‘70s worth noting is Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers by Thomas Szasz. Originally published in 1974, it fundamentally questioned the entire basis upon which modern drug policy rests. Szasz saw prohibition as a strategy with which the ruling class defines and persecutes social deviance, all under the pretense of medical science and public safety. Stunningly refreshing still 50 years later, Szasz’ book offers a candid and realistic assessment of the War on Drugs which had just been born but was already destined to failure—something Szasz could see quite clearly.
The works of McCoy, Pekkanen, and Szasz each contributed enormously to the collective discourse around drugs during the Nixon administration and for decades afterward. Whether wittingly or not, they laid the groundwork for subsequent generations of heads, scholars, and journalists who sought to understand the messy reality of drug production, distribution, and consumption, and the politics that shape and are shaped by these processes. Beyond what each text reveals individually, they collectively show us how the nature of drug scholarship changed drastically during and immediately after the creation of the War on Drugs.
To be continued…