Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the drug control policies conducted by the United States and the European Union in the Andes, the major cocaine-producing region in Latin America. These two actors are chosen because they possess significant political and economic influence on international politics. It explains why the United States and the European Union take fundamentally different approaches to controlling drugs, although they are aiming at the same goal of reducing cocaine production in, and flow from, the Andes. The United States perceived cocaine trafficking as a national security threat that needed to be eliminated to defend the homeland by the 1980s. The book builds upon an existing literature in the field of drug trafficking. The size of the cocaine industry in Latin America can be estimated through the financial power of the criminal organisations involved.