Santiago is an anthropologist who researches how drug consumption, drug trafficking, and drug policing impact social life. His primary research analyzes the process of social change experienced by the South Texas-Mexico border region as a result of the contemporary national security imperative to secure borders and the prohibitionist politics of drug control. He is also currently conducting an ethnographic project that analyzes evolving public attitudes towards marijuana as both a recreational substance and a medicine in Colorado during the current “legalization” period.