Editors’ Note

Issue 8: Drugs

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Is there an “after” the war on drugs? Fifty years after Richard Nixon’s famous declaration that narcotics were “America’s public enemy number one,” the effort to eradicate drugs continues to shape U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Yet today drugs are more prevalent than ever: International drug use is up, and drug-related violence continues unabated. Why? What happens next? The pieces in this issue seek to answer these questions.

From the Philippines, Bryony Lau follows one woman’s fight for justice in the aftermath of the deadly drug wars led by Rodrigo Duterte, the country’s former president. As many as 30,000 may have died under Duterte, but only a handful of killings, Lau reports, will ever be tried. In London, Will Coldwell looks at the crackdown on laughing gas, and asks whether the British government, in attempting to outlaw the popular drug, has misidentified its target. And in a reflective critical essay, Alexander Aviña looks back upon Mexico’s forgotten experiment with marijuana legalization.

Several of our stories look at new and unusual drugs. Justin Salhani investigates how Captagon, a German club drug, has enriched the Assad regime and allowed Syria to force its way back into the Arab League. In Kalundborg, Michael Thykier talks to the Danes getting rich off of American fat and asks whether Novo Nordisk, the company that produces Ozempic, has bloated the Danish economy. From Cuba, Abraham Jiménez Enoa infiltrates a rural group who claim that magic spring water can heal all wounds. And in a new poem, Amit Chaudhuri considers his own relation to the daily visitation of his “amazing sleeplessness.” 

Finally, this issue also features a nicotine-filled short story by Xu Zechen.

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—The Editors