3 credit hours

This course explores how, since the mid-1980s, the so-called "war on drugs" has helped to fundamentally reshape America in ways we have yet to understand or even acknowledge. The central question of the course is: what are the cultural forces at work that allow us to explain how the repressive policies and practices of the drug war can exist in an ostensibly free society? To engage with this question, the course explores topics such as race, racism, American mythology, capitalism, the history of drug policy, and the globalization of the drug war. This course can be used to satisfy University Studies requirements.