NCJ Number
185052
Date Published
1998
Length
216 pages
Annotation
This book examines why the United States is losing the war on drugs and shows how the drug war has led only to overcrowded courts and prisons, rising crime, official corruption, eroded civil rights and race relations, and new public health crises.
Abstract
In ending the war on drugs, the author makes a case for an alternative policy: carefully controlled legalization, with resulting income used to fund greatly expanded drug education, prevention, research, and treatment programs. Every facet of drugs is examined, from statistics on casual drug use and addiction to the workings of the smuggling networks of Colombian cartels and Asian opium traffickers to the often shoddy operations of government agencies. The author reveals the many ways in which the war on drugs is not working. He notes that only an estimated 10 to 25 percent of illegal drugs are stopped at the border despite massive efforts; that cocaine, heroin, and marijuana have increased in purity because law enforcement efforts have led smugglers to dilute less, thereby decreasing bulk; that the number of deaths due to drug trafficking far exceeds those due to drug use; and that street prices of illegal drugs have declined since the 1980's. Notes and tables