The Devil’s Drug: The Global Emergence of Crystal Meth

With a combination of thorough investigative journalism, daring fieldwork, and colorful atmospheric sketches, Teun Voeten draws a very detailed and disturbing picture of a drug that is on a rapid international rise.

Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as crystal meth, is one of the most addictive drugs in the world. Heavy users can destroy themselves in just a few months. Originally given by the Nazis to their troops to fight the blitzkrieg, it has now conquered the whole world and is used at sex parties in Amsterdam and Antwerp, by former hippies in Prague, by the underclass in the slums of Harare, Cape Town, and Peshawar, by truck drivers in Thailand, and by workers in the sweatshops in Bangladesh.

Researcher Teun Voeten traveled the globe for two years to investigate all sides of this diabolic drug, exploring the bizarre history and pharmacological effects. He talked to homeless addicts in Tijuana and Los Angeles, cartels in Mexico, international drug experts in Bangkok and Kabul, and more. Voeten also interviewed numerous authorities, judges, and social workers who are trying to stop the meth epidemic.

Originally, Teun Voeten studied philosophy and cultural anthropology in the Netherlands. He learnt photography by working as an assistant at commercial photographers. Since 1990, he has covered the conflicts in Israel, Rwanda, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Lebanon, DR Congo, Sudan, Libya, and Ukraine for publications such as Vanity Fair, National Geographic, and Newsweek. He was shot by a sniper in Bosnia, nearly executed by drugged up child soldiers in Sierra Leone, kidnapped at gunpoint by Colombian rebels and survived several Taliban ambushes.

In the 1990s. Voeten lived 5 months with an underground community of crack addicted homeless and wrote the book Tunnel People. It appeared in Amsterdam in 1996 and in an updated US version in 2010 at PM press. In his book How de Body? Hope and Horror in Sierra Leone (2000 Dutch edition, 2003 US edition, St Martin’s Press) he describes the violent civil war in that country that nearly cost his live. In 2012, he published the photo book Narco Estado: Drug Violence in Mexico. Together with film maker Maaike Engels, he made documentaries on the Calais migrant camp in France and a short film on Mexican sicarios.

In 2018, he obtained his PhD with a thesis on the Mexican drug war. His totally rewritten study appeared in 2020 as a Small Wars Journal book titled Mexican Drug Violence: Hybrid Warfare, Predatory Capitalism, and the Logic of Cruelty. Recently, Voeten researched drug related crime for the city of Antwerp which resulted in his book Drugs: Antwerpen in de greep van de Nederlandse syndicaten (Pelckmans, Antwerpen, 2020) In 2021, he investigated the world of crystal meth and its global emergence. In 2022, he published ’Drug van de Duivel. De Wereldwijde Opkomst van Crystal Meth.’

Teun Voeten still works as a reporter and social researcher at large. He is often asked for guest lectures at top universities world-wide and appears frequently on international talk shows. For his expertise on drugs, warfare, and organized crime, he is often consulted by city and national governments and prestigious think tanks.