Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places

RAND Studies in Policy Analysis

by Robert J. MacCoun, Peter Reuter

This meticulously researched study represents the first effort to provide a nonpartisan and objective analysis of how the United States should approach the drug legalization question. It surveys what is known about the effects of different drug policies in Western Europe and what happened when cocaine and heroin were legal in the US a century ago. The book shows that legalization involves different tradeoffs between health and crime and the interests of the inner city minority communities and the middle class. The book explains why it is so difficult to accomplish substantial reform of drug policy.

Genres: Drugs, History, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 1997

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a great read to understand drug policy throughout the world and different solutions many have proposed to fight the epidemic other than handle the situation through corrections and law enforcement. The book does not lean either way in my opinion, it is informative and provides facts both good and bad about each solution.

[Wayne Kepner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best drug policy book I’ve read in a long time

[TJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book fails to deliver on its promise of providing a "nonpartisan and objective" analysis of the drug legalization question. The authors repeatedly claim that they are applying an objective utilitarian analysis, but this is true only if you accept their assumption that drug use is a completely irrational behavior that provides no benefits to the user. The book contains a massive table listing every harm that could possibly be related to drugs, but at one point the authors explicitly say that they have excluded the benefits of drugs from their analysis. How could it be a utilitarian cost benefit analysis if they ignore the benefits?

The book does discuss many topics that tend to come up in academic drug policy discussions. There is information on the Swiss "needle park" experiment and Netherlands drug policy. But since the book is 10 years old, there is nothing on recent developments such as the results of Portuguese decriminalization or the growing support for legalized cannabis.

Don't be fooled by the pot leaf on the cover - it is no indication of the book's politics. The authors' paternalistic tone will sound foreign to many readers in 2011. The Internet's free flowing information has changed this debate - we are now much more empowered to make informed, rational decisions about what to put in our bodies and how to do it. The authors' conclusions are problematic because they assume irrationality on the part of drug users. Nevertheless, this book is a useful read if you are looking for facts related to drug policy or background information on the academic drug policy debate.

[Jeffrey Dhywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book about drug policy reform, well documented, but too tepid in my own opinion. I wish the author had tossed off his academic prudence and had the guts to draw the logical conclusion to his own analysis. This is still an important book.