The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line
New book from Birkbeck academic calls for changes in drug policy legislation
Dr Kojo Koram from Birkbeck’s School of Law has published a new book: The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line. The book brings together nine essays, examining the global war on drugs, which has led to millions of people dead, displaced and incarcerated. The essays reveal the racist impact of the war on drugs across multiple continents, as international drug prohibition has been disproportionately enforced on oppressed races.
The topics under examination in the collection include racialised drugs policing at festivals in the UK, the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico, the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel and the management of black bodies in Brazil.
Dr Koram says: “My aim with this book was not only to reveal how the regulation of drugs and race reinforces racial oppression and inequality, but also to drive forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter, and to call for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, both nationally and internationally. I believe that voices and stories in my book will ring true for all people fighting racism today.”
The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line by Kojo Koram is published by Pluto Press.
Further Information
Dr Koram teaches in the following areas:
- International Law
- Postcolonial/decolonial legal theory
- Political philosophy