Benjamin T Smith

Magisterial and immensely readable... True crime at its historical best, replete with all the larger-than-life characters and thrills and spills of a Netflixnarco drama

With the skills of a fine historian and the verve of a true storyteller Benjamin T. Smith unearths the twisted roots of the catastrophic drug war. A fascinating, surreal and tragic tale

Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and Blood Gun Money

A compelling narrative that at last gives us a history-for-all of Mexico's all-out drug war

Ed Vulliamy, author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline

Smith's depth of knowledge astonishes... This searing history leaves a mark

A well-researched, sobering view of the damage that Americans' need to get high wreaks on [their] neighbors

A roiling, rambunctious trek through all that created the modern Mexican drug trade ... Really great stuff, really great reading.

The Dope offers an expansive and compulsively readable popular history that successfully upends more than a century of false rhetoric, shattering the most insidious and persistent myths about Mexico's drug trade ... A vital corrective.

Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

At last, a history that truly makes sense of the sound and fury of the Mexican drug trade

The Dope is breathtaking. It casts an unforgiving light on the dark corners of a sinister history.

Benjamin Smith dispels the myths with a much-needed dose of reality ... [A] crisply written, deftly narrated book.

Daniel Immerwahr author of How to Hide an Empire

Fascinating ... Smith tells of the forgotten men and women who have shaped Mexico's narco trade - bringing these ghosts back to wild and violent life.

Toby Muse, author of Kilo: Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels

The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

Discover the secret history behind the headlines. 
 
The Mexican drug wars have inspired countless articles, TV shows and movies. From Breaking Bad to Sicario, El Chapo’s escapes to Trump’s tirades, this is a story we think we know. But there’s a hidden history to the biggest story of the twenty-first century. 
 
The Dope exposes how an illicit industry that started with farmers, families and healers came to be dominated by cartels, kingpins and corruption. Benjamin T Smith traces an unforgettable cast of characters from the early twentieth century to the modern day, whose actions came to influence Mexico as we now know it. There’s Enrique Fernández, the borderlands trafficker who became Mexico’s first major narco and one of the first victims of the war on drugs; Eduardo ‘Lalo’ Fernández, Mexico’s most prominent heroin chemist and first major cocaine importer; Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the brilliant doctor and Marxist who tried (and failed) to decriminalize Mexico’s drugs; and Harry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics whose sensationalist strategies paved the way for U.S. interference and the extraordinary levels of violence in Mexico today. 
 
The Dope is the epic saga of how violence and corruption came to plague modern Mexico, and the first book to make sense of the political and economic big picture of the Mexican drug wars.

Benjamin T Smith

Praise for The Dope

Magisterial and immensely readable... True crime at its historical best, replete with all the larger-than-life characters and thrills and spills of a Netflixnarco drama

With the skills of a fine historian and the verve of a true storyteller Benjamin T. Smith unearths the twisted roots of the catastrophic drug war. A fascinating, surreal and tragic tale

A compelling narrative that at last gives us a history-for-all of Mexico's all-out drug war

Magisterial and immensely readable... True crime at its historical best, replete with all the larger-than-life characters and thrills and spills of a Netflixnarco drama

With the skills of a fine historian and the verve of a true storyteller Benjamin T. Smith unearths the twisted roots of the catastrophic drug war. A fascinating, surreal and tragic tale

A compelling narrative that at last gives us a history-for-all of Mexico's all-out drug war

Magisterial and immensely readable... True crime at its historical best, replete with all the larger-than-life characters and thrills and spills of a Netflixnarco drama

With the skills of a fine historian and the verve of a true storyteller Benjamin T. Smith unearths the twisted roots of the catastrophic drug war. A fascinating, surreal and tragic tale

A compelling narrative that at last gives us a history-for-all of Mexico's all-out drug war

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