State-narco networks and the ‘War on Drugs’ in post-transition Bolivia, with special reference to 1989-1993

This thesis examines the development of state-narco networks in post-transition Bolivia. Mainstream discourses of drugs tend to undertheorise such relationships, holding illicit economies, weak states and violence as synergistic phenomena. Such assumptions fail to capture the nuanced relations that emerge between the state and the drug trade in different contexts, their underlying logics and diverse effects. As an understudied case, Bolivia offers novel insights into these dynamics. Bolivian military authoritarian governments (1964-1982), for example, integrated drug rents into clientelistic systems of governance, helping to establish factional coalitions and reinforce regime authority. Following democratic transition in 1982 and the escalation of US counterdrug efforts, these stable modes of exchange between the state and the coca-cocaine economy fragmented. Bolivia, though, continued to experience lower levels of drug-related violence than its Andean neighbours, and sustained democratisation despite being a major drug producer. Focusing on the introduction of the Andean Initiative (1989-1993), I explore state-narco interactions during this period of flux: from authoritarianism to (formal) democracy, and from Cold War to Drug War. As such, the thesis transcends the conventional analyses of the drugs literature and orthodox readings of Latin American narco-violence, providing insights into the relationship between illicit economies and democratic transition, the regional role of the US, and the (unintended) consequences of drug policy interventions. I utilise a mixed methods approach to offer discrete perspectives on the object of study. Drawing on documentary and secondary sources, I argue that state-narco networks were interwoven with Bolivia’s post-transition political settlement. Uneven democratisation ensured pockets of informalism, as clientelistic and authoritarian practices continued. This included police and military autonomy, and tolerance of drug corruption within both institutions. Non-enforcement of democratic norms of accountability and transparency was linked to the maintenance of fragile political equilibrium. Interviews with key US and Bolivian elite actors also revealed differing interpretations of state-narco interactions. These exposed competing agendas, and were folded into alternative paradigms and narratives of the ‘war on drugs’. The extension of US Drug War goals and the targeting of ‘corrupt’ local power structures, clashed with local ambivalence towards the drug trade, opposition to destabilising, ‘Colombianised’ policies and the claimed ‘democratising mission’ of the Bolivian government. In contrasting these US and Bolivian accounts, the thesis shows how real and perceived state-narco webs were understood and navigated by different actors in distinct ways. ‘Drug corruption’ held significance beyond simple economic transaction or institutional failure. Contestation around state-narco interactions was enmeshed in US-Bolivian relations of power and control.

An investigation into the suitability of time-of-flight mass spectrometry in forensic toxicology

Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry is one of the most powerful tools in the toxicologist’s arsenal to detect a wide variety of compounds from many different matrices. However, the huge number of potentially abused substances and new substances especially designed as intoxicants poses a problem in a forensic toxicology setting. Most methods are targeted and designed to cover a very specific drug or group of drugs while many other substances remain undetected. High resolution mass spectrometry, more specifically time-of-flight mass spectrometry, represents an extremely powerful tool in analysing a multitude of compounds not only simultaneously but also retroactively. The data obtained through the time-of-flight instrument contains all compounds made available from sample extraction and chromatography, which can be processed at a later time with an improved library to detect previously unrecognised compounds without having to analyse the respective sample again. The aim of this project was to determine the utility and limitations of time-of-flight mass spectrometry as a general and easily expandable screening method. The resolution of time-of-flight mass spectrometry allows for the separation of compounds with the same nominal mass but distinct exact masses without the need to separate them chromatographically. To simulate the wide variety of potentially encountered drugs in such a general screening method, seven drugs (morphine, cocaine, zolpidem, diazepam, amphetamine, MDEA and THC) were chosen to represent this variety in terms of mass, properties and functional groups. Consequently, several liquid-liquid and solid phase extractions were applied to urine samples to determine the most general suitable and unspecific extraction. Chromatography was optimised by investigating the parameters pH, concentration, organic solvent and gradient of the mobile phase to improve data obtained by the time-of-flight instrument. The resulting method was validated as a qualitative confirmation/identification method. Data processing was automated using the software TargetAnalysis, which provides excellent analyte recognition according to retention time, exact mass and isotope pattern. The recognition of isotope patterns allows excellent recognition of analytes even in interference rich mass spectra and proved to be a good positive indicator. Finally, the validated method was applied to samples received from the A& E Department of Glasgow Royal Infirmary in suspected drug abuse cases and samples received from the Scottish Prison Service, which we received from their own prevalence study targeting drugs of abuse in the prison population. The obtained data was processed with a library established in the course of this work.