ABSTRACT
This case study focuses on an important period in the globalization of drug problems: the early 1970s. The aim is to understand and explain the increase in poppy cultivation, heroin production, and drug trafficking in Southeast Asia and Mexico during that period. The chapter describes US domestic politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s that gave rise to an initiative against drug supplies from Turkey and France. It then provides a chronological discussion of the initiative, examining whether the initiative was accompanied by a shift of the drug industry from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia and Mexico. As a second step for analyzing displacement, the discussion refers to the causal mechanism developed in the first chapter. Finally, empirical black boxes and alternative explanations are examined.
