Originally published: London : I.B. Tauris, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-243) and index.

Opium : a drug in motion through time and space -- Opium and heroin in Asia : early history and geopolitics -- Opium and heroin in Asia : the Golden Triangle and the Golden Crescent -- All-time highs and lows -- In and out of the Golden Triangle and the Golden Crescent -- War, drugs, and the war on drugs -- Opium poppy cultivation -- Successes and failures -- Drug trafficking routes (maps).

Chouvy, a research fellow at France's Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique and an expert on opium production, offers a timely and provocative study of the politics and economics of the poppy in Asia. Despite the broad adaptability of the poppy, Asia accounts for 96% of the world's illicit opium, with war-ravaged Afghanistan alone supplying a staggering 93%. Chouvy meticulously recounts the poppy's very political history, concluding that while illicit production tends to flourish in areas where violence restricts state control, most Asian opium farmers grow poppies in order to combat poverty. Moreover, America's futile 40-year war on drugs has failed (and continues to fail) because it relies on inefficient and counterproductive eradication and crop substitution efforts to reduce supply without addressing the root causes of productioni.e., poverty and food insecurity. Exhaustively researched and cogently argued, Chouvy's analysis of the geopolitics of narcotics should be required reading for policymakers, stakeholders, and concerned citizens.