"The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World", by Tom Feiling; A meta-review

"The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World", written by Tom Feiling, is due for release in South Africa in September 2009. In "The Candy Machine", Feiling sets out to discover how the cocaine industry became so large, and who keeps it running behind the scenes.

What is it all about?

Feiling tracks the history of the cocaine industry from its humble beginnings as an ingredient in red wine and Coca-Cola, through to its present-day infamy as a big-business, big-money drug.
The author travels the cocaine trade route from Colombia to the United States and Britain, interviewing hitmen, kingpins, dealers, users, drug mules, soldiers and narcotics officers along the way.
In appraising drug policies in various countries, "The Candy Machine" argues that efforts to curb cocaine use and distribution have often led to more problems than solutions. Feiling also believes that the US has much to lose by winning the ‘war on drugs’, and that this is the true reason for the States’ negative stance on legitimising narcotics.

Who is the author?

"The Candy Machine" is Tom Feiling’s first book. He is best known for his documentary "Resistencia: Hip-hop in Colombia", which investigates the Colombian civil war and the growth of hip-hop music as the soundtrack of the Colombian disenfranchised.
Feiling also worked as a campaigns director for the Justice for Colombia campaign of the Trade Unions Congress.

What do others say?

Tom Feiling has been praised for the wealth of research he carried out for "The Candy Machine" – both in the library and in the field. His appraisal of drug prohibition policies is said to be well thought through, thought-provoking and realistic.
Criticism of the book focused primarily on Feiling’s conclusions with regard to the need for the legalisation of drug use. Some feel that his stance is too pro-legalisation and that there are important questions with regard to the risk of legalisation that he does not venture into.
In summary, "The Candy Machine" is likely to be an interesting and fact-laden book of which the content is particularly relevant given recent renewed interest in the legalisation of drugs and prostitution in preparation for the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup. At the very least, it will give you that much more appreciation the next time you do a line.

The Observer: “A hectoring voice intrudes on almost every page, attacking the futility and hypocrisy of the West’s and, in particular, America’s stance on drugs, while all but celebrating the ingenuity and derring-do of the cocaine cartels… Still, it’s also worth asking if prohibition is preventing a bad situation from getting worse. At best, Feiling pays lip service to this argument, preferring instead to see the whole issue of anti-drug initiatives and law enforcement as a sort of conspiracy of stupidity.”

Telegraph: “The testimony is formidably voluminous, but Feiling marshals his evidence with the calm, elegant clarity of an expensive barrister leading in a complex fraud trial… There is no facile anti-Americanism in his book (he likes Americans), but he shows that when there was a free market in drugs, with nothing illicit about their supply, there were no big profits to be made, no international trafficking, no violent gangs.”

Financial Times: “Indeed, what Feiling is good at showing is how the ‘war on drugs’ was, and is, primarily a moral movement – as opposed to a public health initiative – and a factually shaky one at that… Feiling’s conclusion to these conundrums is that legalisation is the only answer… Of course, such a move is widely seen as politically untenable, which rather proves Feiling’s argument – that the war on drugs has become too important for either side to end. The face pulling up from the mirror, wiping the cocaine from its nostril, is not always the one you would expect.”

How do I get hold of it?

"The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World" is published in South Africa by Penguin Books. It will be available at Exclusive Books in September 2009 at a recommended retail price of R160.00