ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapter of this book. This book began with an examination of the duality of war and drugs, examining the Opium Wars, and then followed the subsequent seven-plus generations of evolving drug cultivation, trafficking, addiction, and trauma in relation to military incursion the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror. It has taken an international analytical view of the connections between drug use, the regions impacted by military incursion, the experiences of military personnel, and the civilian communities to which they return. The book also illustrates the linkages of drug use and trafficking from one war to the next. Through the background presented in this book, the reader has been encouraged to develop a humanistic approach to the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, rather than simply to continue to view drugs as legalistic, militaristic, or prohibitionist issues.
