Under the current system of the war on drugs, taxing the illicit drug trade seems a contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, a great variety of exaction systems exist by which states, or fractions of states, try to fiscalize resources from participants in drug markets, and integrate this drug revenue into their system of rule. Examples of these resources include anti-money laundering legislation and asset forfeiture laws. This analysis tries to understand the underlying dynamics of the war on drugs and its outcomes from this fiscal perspective by looking at diverse modes of taxing the drug trade, in a variety of jurisdictions along the production-trafficking-consumption-investment trajectory of the international drug trade, and tries to assess the implications of different fiscal regimes for the nature of rule. The article begins with a discussion of the interdependency between the use of organized violence, coercive exploitation, and the establishment of rule. This is followed by an examination of the war on drugs and the financing of rule, with a specific look at fiscal regimes in the Netherlands, England, the United States, Mexico, Switzerland, and Chile. The author notes that from a fiscal perspective, as with formal taxation, the problem of exacting resources from the drug industry is a question of how to extract surplus from accumulated wealth and (illicit) economic activities that take place within a state’s reach. A basic circularity exists between the establishment of rule and modes of revenue collection; without control extraction cannot be enforced, but without considerable amounts extracted, control cannot be achieved and maintained. This dependency of rulers on capital to finance their rule generally forces them to enter into a process of negotiation with their taxable citizens. It is through interaction and interdependency between the ruler and the ruled, that exaction regimes ultimately come to be influenced by a bargaining process in which the rulers’ prerequisites depend on the exchange of the finances to rule for the resources to protect those that finance him. Thus different forms of extracting resources from society can have fare reaching implications for the type of rule that governs society. 61 notes and 68 references