The present issue of Drugs & Conflict intends to debunk and disentangle the most prominent myths surrounding the coca leaf. It aims to clear the air and help steer the debate towards a more evidence-based judgement of the issues.

This TNI briefing aims at contributing to a better understanding of current market dynamics in Southeast Asia, essential for designing more effective and sustainable policy responses consistent with human rights and harm reduction principles.

This Drugs & Conflict briefing focuses on opium elimination efforts and the controversy about involving military forces in anti-drugs operations in Afghanistan.

Based on two studies carried out in the cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, this report examines the origin, characteristics and impact of the explosive increase in cocaine base paste in urban areas.

Opium farmers in Afghanistan and Burma are coming under huge pressure as local authorities implement bans on the cultivation of poppy.

In this issue of Drugs & Conflict, the background to the drugs-related violence in the Brazilian North-East marijuana cultivation area, as well as in the favelas in Rio, is described.

This issue of Drugs and Conflict analyses cocalero peasant organisations in Peru and Bolivia and their interaction with successive governments during the peasant mobilisations of recent years.

This issue of Drugs & Conflict tries to bring nuance to the polarised debate on the Rangoon-focussed political agenda, the demonising of the ceasefire groups and repressive drug policy approaches.

This issue of Drugs & Conflict explains the background to and operation of the US Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in Ecuador, El Salvador and Aruba/Curacao, established since 1999.

The anti-drug strategy in Colombia limits the establishment of the basic political conditions necessary to attain the socio-economic goals of alternative development.

This briefing sets out the history to the original call for a UN special session on drugs and explains why no genuine evaluation has been permitted to date.

This issue of Drugs & Conflict attempts to outline the possibilities for a breakthrough in the current impasse of the current international drug control regime.

This Drugs & Conflict debate paper elucidates the analysis TNI contributed to a high-level international policy conference to evaluate 25 years of Alternative Development.

With the new international context of the war against terrorism, the war on drugs moves centre stage as well. While drugs and terrorism are now shoved together to demonise the ‘evil’ enemy, reality is the victim. Blending the two wars to one seriously endangers the advances made to find a solution to the drug problem.

The second issue of our series is dedicated to the controversial topic of Colombia’s aerial fumigation of coca and opium poppy fields.

The first issue of the Drugs & Conflict Debate Papers is devoted to the controversies that have arisen around Plan Colombia.