Somewhat belatedly, I am reading Joseph Douglass Junior’s Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America,[1] which purports to show that drugs were foisted upon the so-called west, and upon America in particular, by the Communist bloc. Supposedly initiated by China in the late 1920s, the plot was picked up by the Soviet Union during the Korean War in the early 1950s, and it was then shifted with Cuban assistance to Latin America in the early 1960s. The countries involved in this massive subterfuge were all of the above plus North Korea, Vietnam, most of the countries of the Soviet bloc, and especially Czechoslovakia, as well as many others. And this is where the thesis of the book surely breaks down. No matter the motives, as well as the many subversive initiatives, which are plausible enough, the countries involved could never do anything in concert for long enough to have a lasting effect anywhere around the globe. The case dismissed, as witnessed by the breakdown of the Communist bloc a few short years after this valiant book appeared in print. Whence its well-deserved obscurity, no doubt.

Footnote

1. Atlanta, Georgia: Clarion House, 1990.