Drug Policy and Society

Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America

Joel Miller

Joel Miller is not a conventional liberal, but a libertarian who wants to communicate with conservatives. His book reviews the impact of the illegality of drugs in the United States – the constantly failed efforts at interdiction; the corruption in inner city policy forces where not only are cops provoked to corruption by the temptation to rip off drug dealers, but also standard police work involves illegal searchers, perjury, and planted evidence; the funding of terrorists through their involvement in drug production and trafficking – which is only possible since drugs are relegated to the black market. This latter is of special interest in an election year, where each side outdoes the other in attacking drugs, drug traffickers, and terrorists. Miller points out also that opium production has spiked in Afghanistan following the demise of the Taliban. As I have noted in my book, 7 Tools To Beat Addiction, even such a thoroughgoing analysis as Miller’s misses a fundamental point: addiction – to prescription drugs, alcohol, media and electronic entertainments, et al. – is so prevalent that all efforts at attacking drugs as the source of our constant and growing tendency to be addicted are doomed. We need to understand that addiction is not related to the chemical structure of drugs but to a growing environment of addictogenic mechanisms in our society, an environment particularly evident in the lives of our children.

Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000

Martin Torgoff

This encyclopedic book traces the history of American drug use after World War II. It is a duel volume: Torgoff himself was a drug abuser who finally found his way through 12 step programs; yet his message is that most Americans have and will try drugs, so that we need more sensible policies. Thus, at the same time that he describes how most drug experiences are manageable, and recommends harm-reduction, non-abstinence policies, his own story of drug use – and many other examples in his book – is highly negative and demands abstinence. Incidentally, Torgoff attended and writes about the SMART Foundation group, organized by Ethan Nadelmann, of which Stanton was a part (Stanton attended the meeting at which Torgoff was present).

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs

Douglas Valentine

The title of this book does not reveal that it is a history of a legendary agency, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Charged with enforcing America’s drug laws, the agency and its colorful investigators penetrated the Mafia (finding ties with several U.S. administrations). The agency was an exercise in power politics, not concerned with capturing and eliminating drug traffickers, so much as serving those in power. This involved permission for heroin to be dealt from some sources, while pursuing racial and ethnic bugaboos. Even the Israelis are implicated in such drug dealing. The agency was brought down (in 1968) – when international and national drug hunting was reaching its zenith – out of jealousy, according to this book, on the part of the FBI and the CIA. A fun, colorful story, and one that makes you see how drug wars are doomed, even aside from economic and social realities, by the bureaucracies that carry them out.

The Real Drug Abusers

Fred Leavitt

Fred Leavitt’s The Real Drug Abusers is a well-researched and well-written book with two purposes, not usually linked. On the one hand, he disputes the vilification of most illicit drug use. But he then makes the novel leap of reviewing the vast sins of the pharmaceutical manufacturers – buying off of researchers, suppression of negative findings, innumerable undisclosed negative reactions to widely prescribed drugs – and on and on. He asks the simple question – why should the misuse of information to make profits for drugs sold to enable people to lose weight, fall asleep, feel socially comfortable, et al. not be called drug-related abuse when that label is given to those who choose to use drugs, for example, to pursue self awareness? Leavitt finds one thing in common among those who expand and intensify the war on drugs and others who overpromote pharmaceuticals – the search for profits.

A Drug War Carol

Susan Wells and Scott Bieser

By popular request, we finally recommend a comic book for easy reading. The text is antic (Scrooge McCzar is confronted by the ghost of Harry Anslinger), 64 of the book’s 80 pages are artwork, but there is an extensive bibliography and notes section addressing important references in the world of drug policy reform. The perfect Christmas present for your pothead relative or politically dissident friend!

Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America

Ted Galen Carpenter

Books on the futility and negative impact of America’s drug policy now appear on a nearly monthly basis. This book is directed towards the specific impact of America’s drug war on Latin America – in terms of environmental devastation, corruption, civil strife between governments and their peasant, cocaine-growing populations – all caused by, first, American use of drugs, and second by the U.S. government’s efforts to suppress drugs where they are grown. Of course, this is impossible, primarily because this is a moving target. As one supplier nation is attacked (as in the case of Columbia) to the extent that drugs are successfully suppressed, production simply moves elsewhere (e.g., Peru and Bolivia). And, of course, what if cocaine use is suppressed successfully – where then will drug users go? In the case of cocaine and stimulant drugs, we are now witnessing a new drug panic around methamphetamines, produced domestically, in Latin America (Mexico), and overseas. Meanwhile, according to the U.S.’s own reports:

Efforts to significantly reduce the flow of illicit drugs from abroad into the United States have so far not succeeded. Moreover, over the past decade, worldwide production of illicit drugs has risen dramatically: opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled and coca production tripled. Street prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen significantly in the past 20 years, reflecting increased availability.

Congressional Research Service, Drug Control: International Policy and Approaches, December, 2002.

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser wrote a radical best seller in 2001, Fast Food Nation, which described how MacDonalds and its descendants epitomize, and drive, American culture’s worldwide negative health, social, economic, and environmental impact.

Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market has a similar economic focus. This time, Schlosser is concerned with classic economics – i.e., what people want they will spend money to get. Scarcity drives prices up; abundance lowers prices – as applied to porno, marijuana, and farm labor. And, the combination of topics is confusing (isn’t “Rock & Roll” the phrase that follows “Sex, Drugs, and. . .”).

Indeed, Schlosser’s message is very different as concerns farm laborers from his perspective on porno and drugs – he points out that there are so many willing fruit pickers that there is no need to pay them much. Yet, a small increase in the cost of vegetables and fruits, which most Americans would readily tolerate, could substantially improve the lives of Mexican immigrants in California.

While this message is in the great tradition of prolabor radical writing, Schlosser points out a wholly different part of the economic equation in regards to marijuana and porno – if people want them, laws prohibiting their use will fail, creating billion-dollar black markets and grotesque efforts at regulation.

For marijuana, this means that private behavior that hurts no one (probably including the smoker) punishment is often more draconian than it is for violent criminals (even murderers) and actively drunk drivers. Schlosser elaborates what many don’t realize – that prosecution of marijuana users has risen sharply, even under Clinton (whom the Bush administration regards as impossibly soft on drugs).

Schlosser considers the economics of porno in the fascinating story of Reuben Sturman, porno pioneer and kingpin. This is Schlosser’s reportorial strength – concretizing stories in colorful individuals and details. But his approach leads this book to get lost in details and narrative stories (like Sturman’s) at the sacrifice of a strong underlying argument or philosophical-ethical point of view. You can learn a lot about marijuana cultivation and criminal regulation in Schlosser’s book but his argument for legalization could be put more simply – is it morally right for society to regulate the private behavior of productive citizens?

Legalize This!: The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs

Douglas Husak

For those interested, the moral argument for legalization of marijuana is best advanced by Douglas Husak, Rutgers philosophy professor, in his book, Legalize This!: The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs. Husak argues straightforwardly and persuasively that criminalizing drug use, and not drug use per se, is wrong. Among other things, Husak deals with all the other drugs that Schlosser ignores – for example, would Schlosser have us shift our attention to arresting cocaine or ecstasy users once marijuana is legalized?

Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History

James A. Morone

Jame Morone is an historian who analyzes the strange trend in a secular nation like the United States to define its key social and political issues in moral, and religious, terms. Americans do not analyze events in historical, social, or organizational terms. Rather, they attribute outcomes to good and evil, to personal action and failure, and to the divine imperatives of God. This is why abortion wars continue to be fought, why despite ample evidence of their effectiveness needle exchange programs are not permissible, why we believe God wants us to fight Saddam Hussein. It is why when political figures err they are excommunicated as well as being drummed out of office, why we attack opponents as being morally deranged, and why we do not practice public health so much as public morality in the areas of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture

Brian Preston

This is a book for the adventurous in spirit (at least, for adventurous readers). It is a stoner’s guide to marijuana culture around the world, as Brian Preston circles the globe seeking pot. His stories are funny and informative. Indeed, it is always worthwhile to view other cultures in “backwards” parts of Asia where the whole idea that marijuana should be illegal (brought on by the U.S.’s global war on drugs) violates a thousand years of custom and usage. Preston does a good job throughout in exploring the history and regulation of marijuana in each region, including his discussion of the medical marijuana movement in the United States. Preston succeeds in creating a larger picture of a drug that has been used widely throughout history, making us ask the question, “Who decided, why and how, that people should not use this substance – and what historical, cultural, pleasurable, and libertarian values are they violating in foisting this view on everyone around the planet?”

Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family

Charles Bowden

Charles Bowden traces the actual impacts of our drug war on other countries and their citizens, and, finally, on the U.S. He shows that the reach and sway of illicit drug money is greater than we can imagine. This is because the Mexican economy is kept afloat by drugs, as indeed is the American economy. Mexico/Mexicans earn $30 billion a year through drug trafficking, while U.S. banks launder about $300 billion a year in drug money (equivalent to the U.S.’s international trade deficit). Drugs represent more than 60 percent of the Mexican economy, and 20 percent of the American! Obviously, when the entire lifestyle and well being of a nation depends on an activity, there will be no real effort to eliminate it. Rather, the reverse is the case, and at a local level Mexican border states are devoted to maintaining the drug trade with the U.S., to the point of killing anyone who endangers the trade in the blink of an eye (there are thousands of drug assassinations in Mexico annually). Moreover, according to Bowden, U.S. operatives and policy makers accept and work with this reality. The title of Bowden’s book refers to the murder in the U.S. (Texas) of the brother of a U.S. drug official. The accused murderer (a 13-year-old boy employed as an assassin) is acquitted, with a defense provided by Mexican government money. The DEA agent’s career and life is ruined, while the killer goes on to rise in a Mexican drug cartel.

The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics

Richard Davenport-Hines

Richard Davenport-Hines endeavors to scope out the history of addictive drugs and policies concerning them. Davenport-Hines is earnest, studious, and humane. But this is well traveled territory, and the book covers much the same territory (and with a very similar attitude) as Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, by David E. Courtwright.

Davenport-Hine’s book (like Courtwright’s or Michael Massing’s highly publicized The Fix) occupies the vast middle range of addiction analysis-policy reform. That is, he notes the perpetual failure of, specifically America’s, continuing criminalization of narcotic use, a policy which makes addicts into criminals with no discernible benefit to society or drug addicts.

But, like Courtwright, Massing, and others, Davenport-Hines is stuck in a cultural analysis that perceives narcotics as somehow specially characterized by the “property” of addiction, a mistake that I and some others have devoted several volumes to remedying. Among other results of thinking narcotics à addiction is the inevitable slighting of the controlled narcotics users who will always dominate any population, but who Davenport-Hines, Massing and others ignore as though all opiate users are addicts.

Despite his scholarship, Davenport-Hines, like Courtwright, can make no sense of Virginia Berridge’s classic (and never surpassed) Opium and the People, which showed that unregulated opiate use in nineteenth century Britain was almost totally benign. Why, now that we have discovered opiates are addictive, and with much more regulation, do we have so many more narcotic problems and self- and medically-identified addicts? Davenport-Hine’s recommendation of more treatment in response to this cultural problem simply is not penetrating enough.

Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion

Daniel Greenberg

Daniel Greenberg's Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion is profoundly important. Greenberg analyzes how, in the American research industry, the best funded scientists in the world constantly lobby for more money — indeed, considerable portions of government research budgets are devoted to marketing, including depicting scientists as needy poor relations. In other nations (notably the UK) remarkable discoveries have been made on shoestring budgets, where in the U.S. massive self-perpetuating projects are undertaken with the major consideration being that the investigators will be funded ad infinitum. (Of course, while big science is Greenberg's focus, American alcohol and drug research follows exactly the same paradigm.) The book is both thoroughly documented and entertainingly written. Greenberg knows of what he speaks, he was the first news editor of Science magazine in the 1960s and then (the I.F. Stone of science reporting) he spent 26 years publishing the gadfly newsletter Science & Government Report.

Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry

Dan Zegart

Dan Zegart has tracked the series of legal cases against the tobacco industry — which have virtually brought the industry to its knees — in a highly readable book. His narrative pulls together this mammoth string of litigation into a single, coherent story. It does not deal with the complicated issues — whether people should be responsible on their own for their decision to smoke (or to fail to quit), the reliance of governments on the tobacco industry (first through taxation and now through fines, judgments, and settlement agreements) for funding for their basic operations, and the motives of attorneys in gaining gargantuan fees for attacking the tobacco industry.

Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films — 1945-1970

Ken Smith

Ken Smith has tracked post WWII films shown in classrooms to teach adolescents proper attitudes and good behavior. These films are a treasure trove of what schools thought kids should learn about staying in school, politeness, drugs, alcohol, and sex. Here's a quiz question: Did a film actually show children go blind from staring at the sun while stoned on LSD? Pay special attention to the world as seen through the lens of Sid Davis, who in addition to alcohol and drug films, keyed on childhood sexual molestation (starring his daughter in several films).

Drug Policy and Human Nature: Psychological Perspectives on the Prevention, Management, and Treatment of Illicit Drug Abuse (The Language of Science)

Warren K. Bickel & Richard J. DeGrandpre (Eds.)

A psychological analysis of the relationship among drugs, culture, and human nature, examining abuse within larger societal context in which it occurs. Sections cover the psychological assumptions behind drug policy and the social and cultural factors influencing it, as well as the contribution psychology can make to understanding and changing drug use, and informing policy. Contains Stanton's Assumptions About Drugs and the Marketing of Drug Policies.

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things

Barry Glassner

Barry Glassner — whose research trashed claims that Jews were becoming alcoholics in equal proportion to other Americans — has written a book showing that we fear all the wrong things. We are hounded by worries about school violence, plane crashes, crack babies, drug abuse, razor blades in Halloween candy et al., events that are either rare or nonexistent but that are overblown by the media. These concrete objects for our fear fuel public policy, but do not address our real anxieties and their sources.

We become what we behold. And what we behold in our public media is an America more terrifying than it actually is. Combining meticulous scholarship with a winning prose style, Barry Glassner shows how and why our media are scaring us to death. The book is as calming as it is serious and offers a sound intellectual alternative to Prozac.
—Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death

A powerful antidote against millennial madness. The Culture of Fear strikes a strong blow against fear itself.
—Elaine Showalter, author of Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media

Barry Glassner compellingly debunks many of the pervasive fears and prevailing myths of our time. Gulf War Syndrome? Road rage? A crime wave? Ritual child abuse? An epidemic of youth suicide? Widespread violence in the work place? All nonsense, Glassner argues, and he provides persuasive evidence and thoughtful insights to show why we are so often afraid of the wrong things — and how these misplaced fears undermine attempts to address our real problems.
—David Shaw, Pulitzer Prize-winning media critic for The Los Angeles Times

Marshalling an impressive and bracing array of evidence, Barry Glassner offers compelling insights into why so many Americans persist in seeing increased rates of death, disease and despair wherever they look and whatever the facts.
—John Allen Paulos, author of Once Upon a Number and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

The Culture of Fear uses strong data and careful reasoning to calm everybody down.
—Amitai Etzioni, author of The Limits of Privacy

Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice

Craig Reinarman & Harry G. Levine (Eds.)

Crack in America reinterprets the crack story, and in doing so offers a new understanding of both drug addiction and drug prohibition. It shows how crack use arose in the face of growing unemployment, poverty, racism, and shrinking social services. It places crack in its historical context - as the latest in a long line of demonized drugs - and it examines the crack scare as a phenomenon in its own right. Crack and the crack scare offer a crucial window into America's drug and drug policy problems.

Important, authorative, comprehensive ... a must read.
—Ronald Dellums, Member of the U.S. Congress

Crack in America is a devastating, sad, angry, though always scholarly book about the many failures of our national drug policy. The contributors make a convincing case that America is unable to solve the many problems associated with crack because it is unwilling to deal with extreme economic and racial inequality except by stigmatizing and punishing the unequal. This book is of urgent importance—a powerfully persuasive and illuminating inquiry about America. I wish it could be required reading for the White House and all the agencies responsible for the country's drug problems.
—Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University

A penetrating analysis which explodes the government-propagated myths regarding crack cocaine.
—Joseph D. McNamara, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; former Chief of Police, San Jose, California

Illegal Leisure: The Normalization of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use

Howard Parker, Judith Aldridge, and Fiona Measham

This book offers a unique insight into the role drug use now plays in British youth culture. Based on a five-year study following ordinary young people who have grown up as the "chemical generation," the authors explore how their subjects make decisions about whether or not to try drugs and how some become regular users. With half this generation having tried an illicit drug and up to a quarter using drugs regularly, this authoritative book explains why, despite parental angst, universal programs and a determined war on drugs, all efforts to ban illegal leisure have failed.

Drug Crazy: How We Got Into this Mess & How We Can Get Out

Mike Gray

Drug Crazy offers a gripping account of the stunning violence, corruption, and chaos that have characterized America's drug was since its inception in 1914. Weaving a provocative analogy between the 1920s, Drug Crazy argues that the greatest danger we face is prohibition itself.

Drug Crazy is an insightful book about the discriminatory nature of the drug war in America and how our politicians have converted a chronic medical problem into a criminal justice problem.
—Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. surgeon general; professor of endocrinology, Arkansas Children's Hospital

Drug Crazy is an oasis of clarity and common sense in a desert of misinformation and hysteria.
—Ira Glasser, American Civil Liberties Union

Anyone who thinks the war on drugs is succeeding should read this book. It shifts the burden of proof from the critics of existing policy to its defenders. That is no mean achievement!
—Elliot Richardson, former U.S. attorney general