US Moral Panics, Mexican Politics, and the Borderlands Origins of the War on Drugs, 1950-62

Argues that 1950s Californian civil society advocates and politicians developed a moral panic over youth narcotic use, asserting that most drugs came across the border and that the only solution was pressuring Mexico through temporary border closures. This idea became a tenet of later US drug policy and, combined with pressure from Mexico’s own moral reformers, forced regional politicians in Mexico to enact periodic cleanup campaigns. Published in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 55, No. 2, pp. 364-387.