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

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.

Covert funds were sometimes funneled to paramilitary groups deeply embedded in opium production. Key Geographical Focus Areas

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. The politics of heroin : CIA complicity in the ...

Using CIA-owned airlines like Air America to transport opium from remote mountainous regions to refineries.

The book traces this pattern across multiple decades and regions, showing how U.S. intervention consistently correlated with surges in drug production: Upon its initial 1972 release, the CIA attempted

In post-WWII Europe, the CIA collaborated with the Corsican Mafia to break the power of communist-led unions on the docks of Marseille, inadvertently allowing the syndicate to establish the "French Connection" heroin pipeline to New York.

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: Key Geographical Focus Areas During the Vietnam War,

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