Saying Yes: In Defence of Drug Use

Jacob Sullum goes beyond debate on legalization or the proper way to win the "war on drugs," to the heart of a social and individual defense of using drugs.

Saying Yes argues that the all-or-nothing thinking that has long dominated discussions of illegal drug use should give way to a wiser, subtler approach. Exemplified by the tradition of moderate drinking, such an approach rejects the idea that there is something inherently wrong with using chemicals to alter one's mood or mind. Saying Yes further contends that the conventional understanding of addiction, portraying it as a kind of chemical slavery in which the user's values and wishes do not matter, is also fundamentally misleading.

Writing in a lively and provocative style that earned him critical acclaim for his previous book, Sullum contrasts drug use as it is described by politicians and propagandists with drug use as it is experienced by the silent majority of users. The lives they lead challenge a central premise of the war on drugs: the idea that certain substances have the power to compel immoral behavior.

Jacob Sullum is the author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health. He is a senior editor at Reason and a syndicated columnist with Creator's Syndicate. Sullum's weekly column appears in newspapers across the country. His work has also appeared in Cigar Aficionado, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times.