In recent months, newspaper stories have cited Afghanistan as the opium capital of the world. Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist Chinese opponent of Mao, was bankrolled by a Chinese gangster and opium kingpin named Big Eared Tu, himself an addict. Apparently the only way to field an army in Southeast Asia is to finance it with opium. Sometimes the trade is controlled by government, sometimes by gangs or insurgencies. All efforts at governmental control have led to corruption, smuggling, piracy, and black markets.
Booth is a novelist and film writer.
The book's most serious flaw is his tendency to gloss over dubious information and rumor, especially in telling the more recent history. But the author's tone is objective and sober almost to a fault. But the outrage is not in the act of taking the drug, or even in becoming addicted, but in the rapacity of sellers, the corruption and hypocrisy of governments, and the economic havoc the drug trade has wrought throughout the world.