SPEED-SPEED-SPEEDFREAK IS GO

Today is the official publication date of my brand new book Speed-Speed-Speedfreak – a cultural, social, and political history of amphetamine. I say “official” because the book encountered a few bumps along the way. Printed in China and trimmed so it resembles a giant black beauty (dextroamphetamine capsule), the books were held up in customs for almost a month and, being of a paranoid disposition, I couldn’t help wondering if something was – as they say – up. All is now well, though. They’re at the distributor and have started shipping. I have posted the story below (from Time via Dangerous Minds) to prove – if any proof was needed – that speed is still a crucial topic. La Familia Michoacana is too recent a development to have made it into the book, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of meth, mayhem, mania, and the Mexican mafia, plus sex, celebrities, rock & roll, Federal corruption, and drug war stupidity literally to fill a book. And for the depression-friendly price of $12.95.

"Mexico’s newest drug cartel, and certainly the most bizarre, is La Familia Michoacana, a violent but Christian fundamentalist narco-gang based in the torrid Tierra Caliente region of western Michoacan state. The group is infamous for methamphetamine smuggling, lopping off enemies’ heads and limbs, and massacring police and soldiers. (Most recently, on June 14, a band of Familia gunmen ambushed a federal police convoy in Michoacan, killing 12.) Yet La Familia’s leader, Nazario Moreno — aka El Mas Loco, or The Craziest One — has written his own bible, and his 1,500 minions hold prayer meetings before doing their grisly work. La Familia, which has started to expand beyond Michoacan, poses more than theological problems for Mexican President Felipe Calderon. His 3½–year-long military offensive against drug traffickers, a period that has seen 23,000 gangland-style murders in Mexico, looks increasingly on the ropes. And amidst it all, investigators tell TIME, La Familia is establishing a troubling new narco-business model: It doesn’t merely buy off officials, it puts its own candidates in power. “Other cartels just pay off the political structure in order to be able to do their business,” says a Michoacan investigator, who estimates the group controls 83 of the state’s 113 municipal governments. “La Familia is making itself the political structure.”

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