The Politics Of Heroin : Cia Complicity In The ... Today

During the Vietnam War, the CIA supported Hmong tribesmen in Laos and South Vietnamese officials who were heavily involved in the opium trade. This led to a heroin epidemic among U.S. soldiers serving in Vietnam, with estimates suggesting up to 15% were users by 1971.

Upon its initial 1972 release, the CIA attempted to suppress the book's publication by pressuring the publisher, Harper & Row, to allow the Agency to review and "correct" the manuscript. The publisher eventually proceeded after McCoy refused to make significant changes. The politics of heroin : CIA complicity in the ...

Updated editions of the book detail how the CIA-backed Mujahideen in the 1980s transformed Afghanistan into the world's leading opium producer. McCoy asserts that while the U.S. provided arms to fight the Soviets, it ignored the massive heroin trade that sustained these guerrilla forces. During the Vietnam War, the CIA supported Hmong

The work also connects U.S. policy in Colombia and the Contra war in Nicaragua to the growth of regional cocaine and heroin markets. Controversy and Legacy Upon its initial 1972 release, the CIA attempted

McCoy argues that CIA complicity was rarely a matter of agents directly selling drugs. Instead, it was a "coincidental complicity" where the Agency allied with local warlords, political leaders, and criminal syndicates who used the drug trade to finance their own activities. In exchange for their anti-communist loyalty, the CIA provided these allies with:

Diplomats and intelligence officers often suppressed investigations into the narcotics activities of "friendly" regimes.

The book traces this pattern across multiple decades and regions, showing how U.S. intervention consistently correlated with surges in drug production: