Description: Cocaine has had a long and prominent position in the history of American substance abuse
Review Quotes:
"Kevin Jack Riley eloquently and convincingly illustrates how international drug control policies have failed and why, debunking the many myths perpetuated about the "supply-side" approach. Through insightful analysis of the Andean region of Latin America, he lays out the costs and consequences of U.S. policy to date. Riley argues forcefully for the need to integrate analysis of marginal costs and benefits into drug control policy and to buck political trends by reorienting resources where they will be most effective. This superb book should be required reading for politicians in Washington grappling with this thorny problem."
--Coletta Youngers, Washington Office on Latin America
"Employing concrete examples to support his theories, Riley argues that source-country interdiction policies are as prone to failure as eradication. . . . [He] presents a convincing critique of United States drug control objectives in the Andean region."
--Joseph A. Gagliano, The Americas
"This book is a thorough and informative Rand corporation study of the international aspects of the U.S. war on drugs, especially the efforts to eradicate coca production in Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru and to interdict cocaine shipped mainly from Columbia."
--Foreign Affairs
"Riley offers a brilliant framework for understanding the dynamics between the Latin American cocaine trade and the policies designed to suppress it. He presents an air tight case for the need to include an assessment of the unintended consequences of our policies in any debate about whether we should stay the course or go back to the drawing board. This sobering and compelling book is a must read for anyone in the trenches or behind the battlelines who is dedicated to the cause of wrestling with one of the most vexing public policy challenges of our time."
--Stephen E. Flynn, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
"Snow Job adds dimensionality and depth to the growing debate about international drug control policy. In an engaging book that is accessible to the public and policymakers, Dr. Riley comprehensively analyzes international control policy's strength and weaknesses, evaluates their implications for national drug control and foreign policy objectives, and proposes practical and attainable changes that would make more effective use of limited drug control resources. The result is a book that could, and perhaps should, help shape the next generation of drug control policy."
--Dr. James A. Thomson, Rand
"Snow Job? Is the first effort to put together a sensible economic analysis of the limits of foreign drug control with an understanding of the political analysis of the limits of aggressive US interventions against the Andean countries. The result is invariably interesting and sobering and important at a time when the drug policy hawks are determined to rachet up the campaign against producers."
--Peter Reuter, Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland; former director of RAND's Drug Policy Research Center