Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results

Mark A.R. Kleiman's Against Excess is a pretty splendid little bit of work, by someone who has clearly been thinking for a long time about how to combat the various drug problems. As with a lot of what's been making me happy recently, Kleiman's book is good less for the solutions it advances -- though it does advance a lot of those -- and more for the habits of thought that it shakes loose. For instance, Kleiman objects to our calling the drug problem "the drug problem." He would insist that there are separate drug problems for alcohol, cocaine, nicotine and heroin. Each has its own modes of acting on addicts. Heroin, for instance, leaves addicts docile; hence the problem with heroin is not the drug itself, and more what happens when the drug is made illegal. Alcohol, on the other hand, is dangerous because it makes people more violent (toward spouses especially) and when it's combined with automobiles. So Kleiman has a number of different policies to suggest for a number of different drugs. One recurring theme throughout is that there ought to be drug licenses, just as there are driver's licenses. Your drinking license could be revoked permanently if you've ever driven drunk. Likewise, you could choose to get a non-drinker's license if you worried about your own ability to control your habit, or if your religion forbade you from indulging. One advantage to getting such a license is that insurance companies would presumably give you lower rates. A number of little suggestions like this add up to a book that strikes a highly nuanced pose between strict prohibition and strict legalization. One such spot in the middle is decriminalization, which makes dealing a drug illegal -- and more-strictly punished -- but leaves consumers alone. Kleiman makes our thoughts substantially more flexible. As such, he moves the entire drug-policy discussion forward. I doubt anyone in government is listening to him -- as he himself notes, war metaphors are far more common and allow for much less wiggle room -- but it's good that he's there. I wonder whether he's made any inroads since the book came out in the early 90's.