A gripping global investigation into the changing world of recreational drugs – who profits, who suffers and what will follow the war on drugs
From America’s plantation-turned-prison known as Angola in Louisiana to the psychedelic boom of Silicon Valley, The Next Fix tracks a seismic shift in global drug policy. Kojo Koram—legal scholar and acclaimed author of Uncommon Wealth—travels across five continents to examine how criminalized substances are being rebranded as commodities in a new billion-dollar industry. Legal cannabis dispensaries now trade in what once led to life sentences. Psychedelics have become fertile ground for biotech. But for all these developments, prisons still swell with underprivileged users and addicts, and enforcement falls hardest along lines of race and class.
This is not a polemic for or against legalization. It is a powerful, clear-eyed reckoning with how we got here—and what kind of future is taking shape in a world addicted to economic “fixes” every bit as much as it is troubled by drugs. Combining reportage, political analysis and vivid personal testimony, The Next Fix tells the untold story of drugs, capitalism and inequality in the twenty-first century.
About the Author
Kojo Koram is an author and Professor, teaching at the School of Law at Loughborough University. Born in Accra, Ghana and raised on Merseyside, he is now based in London. In addition to his academic writing, he has written for the New Statesman, the Guardian and the New York Times. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray 2022). Uncommon Wealth won the English PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and was chosen as a Guardian book of the year. His latest book is The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs.
What People Are Saying
"Koram is an unrivaled translator of legal complexity into vivid prose, and The Next Fix is no exception. This book provides a bracing look at one of the deadliest interactions: what happens when you mix drugs, prohibition, and the forces of global capitalism." Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, author of The Hidden Globe
"Koram tells the stories of those whose lives have been destroyed by the drug war and the heroic efforts to replace it with a system of care and economic transformation. It is both a prescription for a better future and a cautionary tale of the power of capital to up end that vision." Alex S Vitale, author of The End of Policing
"A lucid and compelling guide to the new territory in which yesterday's banned substances are today's wellness aids or pharmaceutical miracles . . . The Next Fix argues persuasively that we stand at a crucial inflection point where we have a chance to replace the monopolies and exploitation of the drug trade with regulatory systems that promote local supply chains, compassionate healthcare and global justice." Mike Jay, author of Free Radicals
"Koram is a fantastic scholar, here he continues to show how many common assumptions about drug use and law enforcement simply cannot be understood but through the lenses of class, race and empire. It is only once we account for such things that we can make sense of what otherwise might seem like completely contradictory, even illogical, policies, ideas and applications. Kojo's case is clear and to my mind irrefutable." Akala, author of Natives
"An eye-opening and often shocking tale of all that's wrong with how we govern drugs, who is deemed illicit, and what harms those choices wreak on the lives of ordinary people around the world. It also shows us that things don't have to be this way. A must-read for anyone who's ever questioned the war on drugs and their new, legal markets." Rosie Collington, co-author of The Big Con
