Meth Wars

Travis Linnemann is Associate Professor of Sociology at Kansas State University. Among other works, he is the author of our Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power, coauthor of Media and Crime in the US, and coeditor of our Ghost Criminology: The Afterlife of Crime and Punishment.

"Meth Wars interrupts official discourse on drug use in America, drawing out the relationship between methamphetamine and the politics of fear. Linnemann invites us into the methamphetamine imaginary, deftly detailing how racism, the drug war and capitalism are manifested and maintained through pop culture, policing and state power. A compelling resource on a critical subject." - Dawn Paley,author of Drug War Capitalism "A scholarly page-turner, Meth Wars takes us on a journey through the cultural imaginary surrounding drug crime, policing, and punishment in the most thorough and illuminating way to date. Poetic, critical, and rigorous, Travis Linnemann frames how we 'see' meth and how our views lead others to 'see' meth as well through the power of misplaced drug war rhetoric. This study of whiteness, class, and privilege in drug imagery and drug wars is a profound contribution." - Michelle Brown,author of The Culture of Punishment "Linnemanns book is a key text for understanding how moral panics about an infernal substance, and its diabolical seller, both stem from and further entrench the manifold contradictions of late capitalist society." (Antipode) "Contributing to scholarly debates about the political and cultural intersections of drugs, rurality, and whiteness, Meth Wars shows how meth impacts not just individuals and institutions but also imaginations. Ultimately, this is a book about challenging the reader to think beyond the widespread justifications for sustaining the war on drugs and the popularized arguments for ending it. Questioning both leftwing and rightwing sensibilities on drugs, Linnemann provokes the reader into imagining a different worldone beyond the meth imaginary." - Jennifer Carlson,Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona "A cultural criminological tour de force, Travis Linnemanns Meth Wars constitutes a brilliant counterpoint to everyday assumptions about drugs, crime, and policing. Moving from television dramas to public service announcements, from small town policing in rural America to global narcopolitics, Linnemann unpacks an insidious methamphetamine imaginary that has come to saturate contemporary social life. In doing so he reveals a deeper secret: if there is indeed a meth epidemic, it is one of epistemic proportions." - Jeff Ferrell,author of Empire of Scrounge