Cannabis, Commodity Chains, and the Origins of the War on Drugs in North America

Isaac Campos: Isaac Campos, University of Cincinnati: “Cannabis, Commodity Chains, and the Origins of the War on Drugs in North America”
This paper applies the commodity-chain concept to cannabis’ history in early twentieth century North America. In doing so, it challenges dominant theories that identify Mexican migrants as the crucial vehicles in the supposed export of cannabis smoking to the United States. Instead, the role played by major pharmaceutical firms in fueling U.S. demand for cannabis drugs is examined. At the same time, the paper assigns a much larger role to Mexico as a producer of ideas that would, after traveling a kind of commodity chain of their own, help to shape this history north of the border. In tracing the movement of these ideas the paper examines key nodes in the production of meanings and markets, including Mexican prisons and soldiers’ barracks, border vice zones, and the social and political worlds where moral reformers in both the U.S. and Mexico acted. Ultimately the paper challenges dominant theories of the War on Drugs that view the United States as the overwhelming and unilateral progenitor of these policies in the Americas. Instead, this research suggests a vision where multiple “chains” crisscrossed to form the stitching of a strong and ultimately extremely resilient transnational political fabric.