This dictionary‐style encyclopaedia covers all aspects of the trade in illegal drugs: the gangs, the law enforcement agents, the drugs advocates, the products and the people. The book begins with a historical overview. This is mostly an account of the USA’s, largely unsuccessful, attempts to reduce illegal drug use by reducing the supply rather than cutting the demand. This is followed by 800 topics, including people like Timothy Leary, drugs, gangs, international statements and conventions, organisations, and control operations. These range in length from a column inch to about a page. The entries end with suggestions to “see also”. The majority have a few references to other publications that provide more information. Some of these are to US newspapers, but most are to books and journals that are widely available. There are a number of pictures, mainly of people, but with some of operations. Only one fails to add to the story, and that is of a man preparing hemp in the Philippines: what he is working on is not cannabis, but is most probably Musa Textalis, a fibrous relative of the banana from which Manila hemp is made.
The title entries are listed, so it is easy to scan the contents (and to make a reasonable count of them if you are reviewing the book). There is a chronology of eleven pages, which starts in 2737 bc with a Chinese reference to marijuana, but really gets going in the 1850s, which provides a time frame for the entries. There are three pages of Web sites covering, amongst other topics, drug advocacy, self‐help, libraries, and the US Government, a bibliography of 22 pages and six‐pages of index. So, the book is easy to use.
The book particularly addresses the US position. But as the USA tries to make policy for many of the countries involved in the production and trade of illicit drugs, often in a way (as the author points out) that is seen by them as a form of colonialism, the book is of wider interest. The zoomed photo of a seizure on the front cover and a foreword by the President of Colombia, gives an initial impression that one might only get half the story, but the book deals very fairly with both sides of the illicit drug trade industries. It should be of wide interest to the public, whatever their involvement in or concern for the recreational use of drugs. It will be a useful reference book for organisations concerned with control, care, or legislation.
