This essay examines politics, drugs and political science in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The connection between politics and drugs is not new, but the processes of globalisation have contributed to an almost exponential rise in the use, production and trafficking of illicit drugs. This trend has placed the drugs question at or near the top of national and international political agendas. Its coincidental occurrence at the end of the cold war has prompted the ‘securitisation’ of the fight against drugs. Unsurprisingly these developments have attracted considerable attention from scholars within and beyond the discipline of politics.
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