"Policing on Drugs is an impressively researched and powerfully relevant history of how the United States and Mexico built a militarized drug enforcement campaign whose failures are well known but whose origins are either forgotten or poorly understood. Aileen Teague shows that this was not simply imposed by Washington but served distinct interests on both sides of the border--even as it persistently failed and generated counterproductive consequences. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the origins of today's fully militarized drug war in Mexico." --Peter Andreas, author of Border Games: The Politics of Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide"Aileen Teague's outstanding exploration of the relationship between Mexican and American efforts to control the War on Drugs provides revealing research from both countries' archives, focusing on a wide range of actors, including the military, intelligence, police, diplomats, politicians, and opposition movements in Mexico. By interweaving Mexico's dirty war on leftists' groups in her analysis of strategies against drug traffickers, readers' will deepen their understanding of the complexities of domestic and international collaboration." --Roderic Ai Camp, Philip McKenna Professor Emeritus of the Pacific Rim, Claremont McKenna College"Policing on Drugs offers a much-needed historical perspective on the militarization of drug enforcement.

Mexico and the US influenced each other through their collaboration, confrontations and shared, stubborn policy mistakes. This is a thorough, clear, and at times surprising reconstruction of the entrenched policy failure that today shapes both countries' societies and politics." --Pablo Piccato, author of A Brief History of Violence in Mexico"Even after the War on Drugs was declared a failure, the idea that violence was collateral damage remained untouched. Aileen Teague's carefully crafted Policing on Drugs disabuses us of this conviction. Disentangling the threads of US and Mexican governments' political interests and social dilemmas, Teague reveals that at the core of the militarized drug control paradigm instituted in the last quarter of the 20th century lays a political project of policing dissent and racial and ethnic 'others.' With untapped governmental documents, including intelligence sources, and a clear narrative, Teague confirms what many of us suspected: the War on Drugs was not about drugs, and its violence was not an undesirable byproduct but its most intentional weapon of choice." --Lina Britto, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University, and author of Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise.