The Silver Bullet Solution: Is It Time to End the War on Drugs?

The War on Drugs is at the root of America’s opioid crisis, mass incarceration, and global instability. Gierach offers a bold, evidence-based solution: legalize and control drugs to end the decades-long failure of prohibition and restore justice and public health.

Tired of fentanyl overdose news? Fed up with endless gang and gun violence? Mad about disproportionate punishment based on race? Furious about migrants fleeing South and Central American countries to reach the USA to escape unlivable corruption and gang violence driven by drug-prohibition laws there? Upset that over 100,000 Americans are shot each year, with surviving victims’ healthcare costs making healthcare unaffordable? Whether called Obamacare, Trumpcare, or Single-Payer? Discouraged that marijuana is still illegal in your country? Angry that America has become the “Prison Capital of the World”?

Did you know that United Nations “drug-control” conventions mandate that 186 nations enact drug prohibition laws? Just like Al Capone loved alcohol Prohibition, drug cartels and drug dealers love drug prohibition. Drug prohibition is the common denominator to a dozen global and American crises.

Author Gierach advocates “The Silver Bullet Solution”—drug legalization and control—to ameliorate those crises. End the failed, 65-year-old World War on Drugs. Gierach says, “Get society off its drug-war gravy train and fix a sick society.”

James E. Gierach is a retired Chicago-area attorney, former Cook County prosecutor, and drug policy reformer.