Legalising The Drug Wars

Provides the first regulatory history of UN drug control and examines its enabling role in the modern 'war on drugs'.

Should drugs be legalized? A few years ago this question was not taken seriously by mainstream opinion, but more recently an increasing number of leading figures have spoken out for legalization, and polls show that a growing percentage of the public favors legalization. This book gives a fair and balanced presentation of both sides in the debate over drug legalization, as well as some of the intermediate positions. It contains the most important articles to have appeared from the beginning of the legalization controversy and clearly sets out all the key arguments on both sides. - Back cover.

This book provides the first multidisciplinary and nonpartisan analysis of how the United States should decide on the legal status of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. It draws on data about the experiences of Western European nations with less punitive drug policies as well as new analyses of America's experience with legal cocaine and heroin a century ago, and of America's efforts to regulate gambling, prostitution, alcohol and cigarettes. It offers projections on the likely consequences of a number of different legalization regimes and shows that the choice about how to regulate drugs involves complicated tradeoffs among goals and conflict among social groups. The book presents a sophisticated discussion of how society should deal with the uncertainty about the consequences of legal change. Finally, it explains, in terms of individual attitudes toward risk, why it is so difficult to accomplish substantial reform of drug policy in America.

On the 75th anniversary of the Harrison Narcotic Act that unleashed the federal anti-drug crusade, historian Richard Lawrence Miller explores the origins, purposes, and effects of America's drug war. Thoroughly documented, The Case for Legalizing Drugs assembles diverse findings by chemists, biologists, pharmacologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, prosecutors, police officers, and drug users themselves. The resulting mosaic argues that most problems associated with illicit drugs are caused by laws restricting them. This book is a realistic appraisal of legalization, vital to anyone concerned about illicit drugs, public policy, and democracy. Despite the ineffectiveness and counterproductivity of anti-drug laws, enthusiasm grows for them. Laws that fail to eliminate drugs may nonetheless achieve hidden goals. Miller illuminates those goals and asks whether they are wise. Although drug war proponents may complain that civil liberties interfere with drug suppression, Miller argues that the answer is not less democracy, but more. He presents a message of hope and healing, based upon a century of scientific research and historical experience, and declares that legalization would not be a surrender to drugs, but liberation from them.

Why have our drug wars failed and how might we turn things around? Ask the authors of this hardhitting exposè of U.S. efforts to fight drug trafficking and abuse. In a bold analysis of a century's worth of policy failure, Drug War Politics turns on its head many familiar bromides about drug politics. It demonstrates how, instead of learning from our failures, we duplicate and reinforce them in the same flawed policies. The authors examine the "politics of denial" that has led to this catastrophic predicament and propose a basis for a realistic and desperately needed solution. Domestic and foreign drug wars have consistently fallen short because they are based on a flawed model of force and punishment, the authors show. The failure of these misguided solutions has led to harsher get-tough policies, debilitating cycles of more force and punishment, and a drug problem that continues to escalate. On the foreign policy front, billions of dollars have been wasted, corruption has mushroomed, and human rights undermined in Latin America and across the globe. Yet cheap drugs still flow abundantly across our borders. At home, more money than ever is spent on law enforcement, and an unprecedented number of people—disproportionately minorities—are incarcerated. But drug abuse and addiction persist. The authors outline the political struggles that help create and sustain the current punitive approach. They probe the workings of Washington politics, demonstrating how presidential and congressional "out-toughing" tactics create a logic of escalation while the criticisms and alternatives of reformers are sidelined or silenced. Critical of both the punitive model and the legalization approach, Drug War Politics calls for a bold new public health approach, one that frames the drug problem as a public health—not a criminal—concern. The authors argue that only by situating drug issues in the context of our fundamental institutions—the family, neighborhoods, and schools—can we hope to provide viable treatment, prevention, and law enforcement. In its comprehensive investigation of our long, futile battle with drugs and its original argument for fundamental change, this book is essential for every concerned citizen.

This completely revised and updated secong edition of the Drug Legalization Debate continues to address, and offer alternatives to, the major issues.

This book looks at the history of drug laws in the United States, the modern-day War on Drugs, and the medical marijuana movement. It provides the opinions and perspectives of police officers, politicians, and the U.S. "drug czar."