Carlsen provides a brilliant understanding of the current crisis in Mexico involving the murder and disappearance of 70 young people by examining the class interests of multinational corporations and Empire strategies to promote these interests. She does this by examining the development and the significance of the "war on drugs" and its relationship to "free trade" policies.
First of all, this meant a strategy to counter the virulent anti-establishment activities of young people that appeared in the 1960s, but more recently to promote the interests of mainly US corporations looking to expand their access to the economies and resources of their neighbors to the south under so-called "free trade" policies. Carlsen pierces the veil of Empire propaganda to show how the "war on drugs" have had, and still have, multiple benefits for the One Percent of the US and their collaborators in countries to the south by promoting state violence against anyone who stands in the way of corporate exploitation. (For the latest examples of Mexican state violence used against protesting youth, read this.)
In the capitalist system, the existence of an underground economy has financial and political advantages. On one hand, the criminalization of drugs creates a situation of vulnerability and ongoing harassment of youth by the repressive forces of the state, and assures that many of them will spend time behind bars. In foreign policy, the drug war justifies U.S. intervention.
The amount of money flowing without transparency or control was a factor, according to economists, in saving the global financial system in the 2008 crisis by providing liquidity to banks and financing speculation at a high level. Transnational banks not only accept drug money, but promote new and more sophisticated ways to launder money and ensure that illegal cash flows into the “legitimate” financial system.
Access to dirty money provides a way to finance illegal political activities and even secret or prohibited wars. The best known example is the funding of the Nicaraguan Contras with drug sales in U.S. neighborhoods by the CIA.