Have the nations of the world begun to converge with respect to drug policy? Which countries have remained apart from the international dialogue? Which have taken steps to forge new, more liberal policies stressing education, treatment, and alternative community-based intervention? Focusing specifically on cannabis, cocaine, and heroin, Illicit Drug Policies, Trafficking, and Use the World Over presents a brief history and analysis of the current laws and policies regarding illicit drugs_widely considered to be a growing international health threat_in twenty five different countries. With its wide breadth of data and analysis, this volume will be valuable for both scholars and students of this seemingly intractable social, legal, and political problem.

Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey explores the history of organized crime in Turkey and the roles which gangs and gangsters have played in the making of the Turkish state and Turkish politics. Turkey's underworld, which has been at the heart of several devastating scandals over the last several decades, is strongly tied to the country's long history of opium production and heroin trafficking. As an industry at the centre of the Ottoman Empire's long transition into the modern Turkish Republic, as important as the silk road had been in earlier centuries, the modern rise of the opium and heroin trade helped to solidify and complicate long-standing relationships between state officials and criminal syndicates. Such relationships produced not only ongoing patterns of corruption, but helped fuel and enable repeated acts of state violence. Drawing upon new archival sources from the United States and Turkey, including declassified documents from the Prime Minister's Archives of the Republic of Turkey and the Central Intelligence Agency, Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey provides a critical window into how a handful of criminal syndicates played supporting roles in the making of national security politics in the contemporary Turkey. The rise of the 'Turkish mafia', from its origins in the late Ottoman period to its role in the 'deep state' revealed by the so-called Susurluk and Ergenekon scandals, is a story that mirrors troubling elements in the republic's establishment and emphasizes the transnational and comparative significance of narcotics and gangs in the country's past.

The need for suppressing the illicit traffic in drugs can hardly be over-emphasized. Yet, the licit uses of drugs, especially for medical and scientific needs, cannot be suppressed. Apparently, it is a ques tion of determining the vvorld requirements of drugs for such legiti mate uses, and of producing and manufacturing them accordingly. Owing to their multifarious medical uses in various parts of the world, it proves to be almost impossible to determine exactly the amount of drugs required for legitimate purposes. There is also the complicating factor that drugs are used for sociological and religious reasons, which have a long history. Not only arc the licit uses and legitimate amounts of drugs difficult to determine but also such difficulties give rise to illicit traffic in them. Yet, it is believed that a concerted international policy, coupled with national co-operation, on various facets of the related problems-namely, limitation of production and/or manufacture of drugs, restriction on cultivation of plants that may contribute to addiction-producing substances, training and rehabilitation of drug addicts, and efficient national administration-would help eradicate drug-abuse. In search of an appropriate remedy, this book has been devoted to a practical study of the problem and to exploring, in this area of international law, the relationship between the political and econ omic interests and the international economic order.

'China was turned into a nation of opium addicts by the pernicious forces of imperialist trade.' This book systematically questions this assertion, showing that opium had few harmful effects on either health or longevity, that most smokers used it in mode

Created in 1919, shortly after World War I, the League of Nations was principally designed to put an end to war. But it went into hibernation when World War II broke out, and was formally wound up in 1946. Not having achieved its primary objective, it was deemed a failure. However, the many accomplishments it did realize certainly allows for arguments against this idea. During its two-decade existence, the League of Nations resolved and defused many conflicts and crises, as well as established a rapport among its members. It was also active in many other political, social, and technical fields, including minorities, refugees, human rights, labor, health, telecommunications, and supervision of former colonial territories, which had become mandates. Above all, the League of Nations proved to be training ground for the United Nations and the countless other organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, which now surround us. Just what the League of Nations was able to do during its brief but hectic career is summed up in this book. The dictionary section contains several hundred cross-referenced entries on its founders and supporters, its rather small staff and secretariat, the various subordinate or related organizations, and their overwhelming tasks. The historical background is described in the introduction and plotted year by year in the chronology while the bibliography points to further reading.