Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis) - Softcover

Maccoun, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 052179997X ISBN 13: 9780521799973

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Synopsis

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.

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Reviews

MacCoun and Reuter, former staff members at the RAND who study drug policy and behavior, have produced one of the largest, most sweeping comparative investigations of the contemporary use, regulation, and policing of various drugs and addictive behaviors, all with an eye to suggesting how the United States might decriminalize certain drugs and rethink public policy toward addictive substances generally. The sheer weight and variety of the authors' evidence, the especially instructive comparisons of addictive behaviors and policies in Western European societies most akin to the United States, and the linking of American policy to punitive antidrug practices in the Third World give the authors' arguments an intellectual heft and force no public discussion on the subject can hereafter ignore. Some readers will not be persuaded by the authors' pointing to the subjective, and even inconclusive, nature of "drug studies." So, too, the comparison of gambling, prostitution, and alcohol consumption with heroin, cocaine, and marijuana use sometimes strains the analysis. But the authors preach common sense rooted in evidence rather than dogma; their temperate tone throughout and their command of the subject make their book anything but a "heresy." Recommended for most collections. Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 052179997X
• ISBN 13: 9780521799973
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496