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Requiem for a CAMP: Post Mortem for a Drug War Institution

Presentation Summary: The life and death of California’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP, 1983-2012) offers a unique analytical window into the time and space of the U.S. war on drugs in a global context. This paper presentation draws on CAMP report archives, ethnographic interviews, and secondary data sources to locate the significance of CAMP, its demise, and enduring legacy for the political economy of domestic illicit cannabis production. The presentation will focus on (a) the geo-politics of its emergence; (b) industrial “balloon effects” associated with its geographies of enforcement; and (c) the eclipse of its foundational logic-and-practice (policing the “Emerald Triangle”) by new political and economic geographies of power, particularly environmental geopolitics and economic crisis.

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