Michael Pugh

For nearly twenty years, Glasgow has been coined Europe’s murder capital, and identified as having the continent’s highest drug harms. The Contemporary History of Drug-Based Organised Crime in Scotland examines converging multiple complexities that contributed to Scotland’s criminal modus operandi concentrating on drug-based organised crime. Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland. The region is likewise responsible for a disproportionate number of the country’s crimes. Police Scotland’s serious organised crime unit has identified as much as 70% of the country’s organised criminal activity to occur within or have ties to the region. A significant amount of these crimes is both directly and indirectly related to the illegal supply of drugs. Numerous law enforcement and political and public responses have been undertaken to reduce violence, organised crime, and drug harms in Scotland. Drawing on key case studies, McLean, Holligan and Pugh shed light on the historical factors that contributed to the embedding of violence, gangs, and drugs into the social fabric of the region. The Contemporary History of Drug-Based Organised Crime in Scotland provides insight into the development of drug based organised crime in the region, and how this process has subsequently shaped the wider criminal landscape of Scotland.

The development of nuclear weapons has been a critical problem for the NATO alliance. In the Pacific, a region of increasing strategic interest for the United States and Soviet Union, nuclear weapons have been an environmental concern since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Opposition to nuclear tests has now been taken a step further with the creation of a South pacific Nuclear Free Zone and the decision by a New Zealand Government to ban port visits by vessels believed to be carrying nuclear weapons. New Zealand's proposal to back its policy with legislation had been seen by the Reagan and Thatcher administrations as a threat to the principle of 'neither confirm nor deny' the presence of nuclear weapons on vessels. This 1989 study examines the questions of principle at issue, the evolution of the ANZUS crisis, its implications for the Western alliance structure as a whole, and the degree to which the 'nuclear-free' virus' in the South Pacific might be catching.