"Tory contender calls for liberal drug laws" was the headline in 2005 when David Cameron MP looked favourably on legalisation. Once PM, however, he clammed up. This is the problem with "British narco-politics", argue the investigative journalists Max Daly and Steve Sampson in this illuminating book: drugs cannot be debated honestly. First coined in 1865, the term narcomania is used here to mean a kind of "moral intoxication" that stifles rational debate. (Remember how Professor David Nutt was slapped down for saying that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse-riding?) Beyond the "cartoon drug world" depicted in the media, however, the reality is far more complex and enmeshed in our daily lives, not least because the global drug economy is now an essential component in our modern banking system; drug money may even have helped keep the banks afloat during the 2008 financial crisis. Of course the City of London is busy laundering drug money, say Daly and Sampson; it reflects Britain's unofficial status as the world's first drug dealer, pushing opium to the Chinese.

• This article was amended on 5 October 2013. It mistakenly put the authors' names in the byline, instead of the reviewer's. This has been corrected.