Gender, Security and U.S. Illicit Drug Control Policy--
VICTIMS AND VAMPS, MADONNAS AND WHORES: THE CONSTRUCTION OF
WOMEN DRUG COURIERS AND THE PRACTICES OF A SECURITY STATE
by Ellie Schemenauer
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University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
WORK IN PROGRESS: PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE
WITHOUT PERMISSION.
Introduction
The increasing militarization of the U.S. “war on drugs” throughout the later
decades of the 20
th
century and into the 21
st
century has been well documented (e.g.,
Campbell 1998; Common Sense for Drug Policy 2004; Desch, Dominguez and Serbin
1998; Drug Policy Alliance 2004; Enloe 2000; Griffith 1997; Isacson 2004; Mabry 1989;
Perl 1989; Wisotsky 1990). Militarized discourses of U.S. illicit drug control have
frequented U.S. Congressional Hearings on the topic and have informed general policy
discussions (e.g., U.S. Congress 1996; U.S. Senate 2004). Indeed, in the last two
decades, U.S. illicit drug control policy has often been characterized by talk of “superior
weaponry, manpower and troop strength” (Barwa 1997: 33), innumerable comparisons to
Vietnam (Barwa 1997: 33; Mitchell 1998: 110) and the Cold War (Blagojevich 1997: 6;
Wilhelm 1998: 5), as well as the more recent attempt by some policy specialists to think
about the “war on drugs” in terms of the “war on terror.”
In these discourses of war, the
enemies imagined are highly masculinized. For example, as former Senator Bob Graham
once put it: “We are fighting a well-organized, well-financed and determined enemy,
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For example, on December 14, 2001, President George W. Bush said in a speech: “It’s important for
Americans to know that trafficking drugs finances the world of terror, sustaining terrorists; if you quit
drugs, you join the fight against terrorism (quoted in Appel and Olds 2002). On February 3, 2002, on
Super Bowl Sunday, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy followed the above comment
up by premiering a series of public service announcements that linked illicit drugs with terrorism.
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