Bonus Episode: "Carl"

Bonus episode with a special guest smack bang in the middle of 1980s Manchester, UK

Written by Ed Edwards

Hosted by Ed Edwards and Eve Steele

Sound Design by Serafin Dinges

Audio Production by Serafin Dinges

Produced by Alastair Michael

Funded by the Arts Council England

Supported by the Mustard Tree Manchester and Arts & Homelessness International.

Further Reading

• Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin. Big fat must-read on the subject for exhaustive detail, every last twist and turn over nearly a century. Most of the above is shaped by McCoy’s towering work.


• Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. Univ of California Press; again exhaustive, largely drawn from the work of US congressional hearings into the Latin American situation.


• Gary Webb (R.I.P), Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Forensic and massive on detail.


• Nick Schou, Shoot the Messenger. The story of how Journalist Gary Webb (see above) was hounded to his death – partly by the big hitters in the US print media – for trying to tell the truth about the link between CIA assets in Latin America and the crack explosion. The book is better than the recent film of the same name telling the same story.

The last book is probably the easiest to read, the first is the best.

And if you are interested in reading Ed Edwards’ play and essay on these topics, you can buy that here: https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/political-history-of-smack-and-crack