News Release

February 21, 2003

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BAD NEIGHBOR POLICY
Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America

"A superb and courageous contribution to a vital debate." -- Arnold S. Trebach, president, International Anti-prohibitionist League, author of The Great Drug War

Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Palgrave; February 3, 2003; $24.95) by Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, is a vivid, hard-hitting new look at Washington's war on drugs in Latin America.

The domestic phase of the war on drugs has received considerable criticism over the years from a variety of groups and individuals. Until recently, most critics have not stressed the damage that the international phase of the war on drugs has done to our Latin American neighbors. However, that is changing and Ted Galen Carpenter, who most recently wrote Peace & Freedom: Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic (Cato Institute, 2002), chronicles the growing disenchantment with the hemispheric drug war.

While some prominent Latin American political leaders have finally dared to criticize Washington, the U.S. government seems determined to perpetuate, if not intensify, the anti-drug crusade. Spending on federal anti-drug measures continues to increase, and the tactics employed by the drug war bureaucracy, both here and abroad, bring the inflammatory "drug war" metaphor closer to reality.

In Bad Neighbor Policy, Carpenter argues that ending the prohibitionist system would produce numerous benefits for both Latin American societies and the United States. Bad Neighbor Policy is an interesting and controversial portrait of this ongoing fiasco.