Book review: Pills, powder and smoke: inside the bloody war on drugs by Antony Loewenstein

In Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, Antony Loewenstein offers an expansive medley of facts, figures and accounts of life in the midst of the drug war, based on travels to six countries on five continents: Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, the Philippines, the UK, the US and Australia. While the book’s ambitious breadth means it sometimes struggles to draw rigorous interconnections, this is a well-intentioned and wide-ranging study that gives a voice to those caught up in the global ‘War on Drugs’, writes Alessandro Ford.