William L. Marcy, assistant professor of history at St. Martin's University, makes the case that the U.S. has, starting with the joining of the Reagan administration's anti-Communist initiatives with the "War on Drugs," played a large role in actually establishing the drug trade as a central economic base in Central and South America. He talks tonight about this and more, as chronicled in his book, The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America (Lawrence Hill Books). "Marcy investigates why South American drug trafficking has remained so hardy and lucrative even as the U.S. has spent billions—usually on wrongheaded measures, as he sees it—to combat both production and export. Costly raids and drug seizures have had minimal impact on production and no impact on U.S. consumption, argues Marcy ... Marcy's connections and conclusions richly reveal how intricately the legitimate and illegal economies are entangled across two continents." - Publishers Weekly.