Cocaine is big business and getting bigger. Governments spend millions on an unwinnable war against it, yet it's now the drug of choice in the West. How did the cocaine economy get so huge? Who keeps it running behind the scenes?In The Candy Machine Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston and Tijuana to London and New York. He meets Medillin hitmen, US kingpins, Brazilian traffickers, and talks to soldiers and narcotics officers who fight the gangs and cartels. He traces cocaine's progress from legal 'pick-me-up' to luxury product to global commodity, looks at legalization programmes in countries such as Switzerland, and shows how America's anti-drugs crusade is actually increasing demand.Cutting through the myths about the white market, this is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before.
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This book contains so much - clearly the go to on cocaine statistics and the history of the war on drugs, probably the least successful war I can think of... so much that cocaine is an epidemic.
Honestly it contains so much data, so many statistics I couldn't even tell if they were being repeated of were all unique in the narrative, eventually it just wore me down. For me it was around 75 pages too long, and I skimmed some parts - but this is more a reflection on me as a reader - I am here for entertainment and relaxation - this surpasses this to an almost academic level.
Feiling has carried out masterful research to pull all this information together, names of people, quotations, stories and anecdotes, and arrange it (loosely in places) into a narrative stream is really impressive, but man it was relentless. His ability to interview such a range of people involved - from politicians and police to drug users, drug mules, street dealers and major drug smugglers brings a real depth to the issue of cocaine. Many of these people have moved on from the positions they were in, but have validated the information and arguments posed by this book.
Divided into three sections - in the first it deals with the history of cocaine (and it precursor coca and its cultural history) and compares the rise of cocaine with other drugs in the market. In the second is works round supply - Latin America, where it is grown, why there is more available than ever before, why is will never stop - corruption, American foreign policy that props up the drug system (wtf?) by supporting some of the worst corrupt politicians and turning a blind eye to drug smugglers who suited them to support other initiatives.
The third section takes on demand, an argument for legalization and/or decriminalisation and future prospects.
The numbers are mind boggling, the disinformation and politics are astounding, the future is frightening. While this is a United States focussed book there is plenty of comparison to the UK and Europe, and some with other parts of the world. The US come out looking like their own worst enemies.
While I can see his point about decriminalisation, I can't bring myself to trust politicians to get his right. Just recently here we have seen a prominent politician in a key role resign due to non-disclosure of shares (conflict of interest), one who was passing on caucus secrets to campaign donors (cronyism), one who has been accused of bullying and abusing staffers and one who suddenly switched political parties without the knowledge of the prime minister! And we are expected to trust these turkeys to write a workable decriminalisation policy for cocaine? Yeah right.
4 stars
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