Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out

Those who forget the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them, and unfortunately the disaster of alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s occurred too long ago for most of us to remember it. Fortunately, Drug Crazy builds a bridge to that time, from whose lessons we can draw guidance today. That the Prohibition experiment (which was at least started and ended democratically, with Constitutional amendments) caused so much damage--especially crime, including the highest murder rate in US history--is a tragedy, but that we have not learned from that tragic experiment and are repeating the mistake on an even greater scale...that is indeed a crime. Drug Crazy goes on to trace the tragicomic escalation of the Drug War from its racist origins to its current heights of madness. This well-researched book is highly recommended for understanding how self-righteous and self-serving bureaucrats got us into the Drug War, and how we can get ourselves out.

I have always wondered why the subject of drug use, addiction and legalization of drug use in the United States has been so polarized. In my years of experimenting with drugs such as Marijuana, amphetamines etc. I learned there are obvious reasons to use caution in the use of all drugs,whether street or legal ones. I find it interesting that all the attention from the press and govenment is always focused on the illegal street drugs and users, yet statistical facts bear out the reality that prescription drug addicts out number street addicts by a hugh margin. I find the book DRUG CRAZY, to be a breath of fresh air and sanity, documenting the real story of the genesis of drug laws and attitudes in this country. Any law that is legislated and enforced based on lies, manipulation of facts is not a law that belongs in a Republic such as ours. Mr. Gray has done an outstanding job in researching the actual documented history of drugs in america. I do not advocate the use of drugs for anyone, especially our youth, that is a personal decision made by free individuals who must take personal responsibility for that decision based on a study of the facts of each drug. This cannot be done if those facts are distorted or deleted from view. If you are confused by all the claims made by those who advocate the WAR ON DRUGS then please, please read this book. Your jaw will drop open when you find out how our present drug laws have come about.

I have recently finished reading an excellent book about what is probably the most important issue in America today, the War on Drugs. Titled "Drug Crazy" (How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out Of It) by Mike Gray, it is a candid expose of the political hot potato that presents a greater threat to the Bill of Rights than most people suspect. Well organized, almost conversationally written and thoroughly annotated, it is a fast read - hard to set down. I breezed through it in two days, and then spent a couple of hours on-line spot checking some of his citations. It's all there. This is not the raving of some conspiracy theorist; rather, it is an appeal to reason, a revealing look at the many sides of a complex issue that has been thus far addressed with only the most simplistic remedies. Read it. It could change your perspective on a lot of things. It is probably the most important book you will read this year.

Book Review : Drug Crazy by Mike Gray (Random House, N.Y.- June, 1998)America's War on Drugs, declared originally by Richard Nixon and waged with varying degrees of enthusiasm by every President since, has become a nearly invulnerable monster, thriving on its own failures and seemingly capable of destroying anyone reckless enough to speak out against it. Its simplistic central premise- drugs pose unthinkable dangers to our children, and therefore must be prohibited- has helped elect legions of politicians who then cite the latest drug scare as reason for tougher crack-downs, harsher laws, and more prisons. So completely has this idea of "illicit drugs" become society's default setting, and so beholden are politicians and others to it, the policy itself receives no critical scrutiny from government and little from academics dependent of federal funding. "Legalization" is a deadly brickbat hurled indiscriminately at all critics without thought that in a society based on capitalism, it is the illegal markets which are abnormal.Although several scholarly, historically accurate books have pointed out shortcomings of this policy since the late Sixties, not one author has effectively attacked drug prohibition as a policy based on a completely false premise, incapable of preventing substance abuse problems; indeed, certain to make them worse. None, that is, until Mike Gray. A professional from the film world, Gray may have written the book no one else has yet been able to: a concise, readable, historically accurate, and well documented indictment of our drug policy. Very few reading his book all the way through will see the drug war the same way they did before. A major question then becomes: how many people will read it? Will it sink without a trace, overlooked like so many earlier criticisms of official policy- or will it be discovered by a public growing increasingly disillusioned by a perennial policy failure which is jamming prisons, impoverishing schools and colleges and effectively canceling! many Constitutional guarantees of personal freedom? Read by enough people, "Drug Crazy" could do for drug reform what "Silent Spring" did for the environment in 1962.Like the film maker he is, Gray opens with a tight close up: Chicago police on a drug stake-out. The view quickly expands to the futility of enforcement against Chicago's massive illegal market. first from the perspectives of an elite narcotics detective and then through the eyes of a dedicated public defender. A comparison with Chicago seventy years ago during Prohibition reveals that police and the courts were equally unable to suppress the illegal liquor industry for exactly the same reasons: the overwhelming size and wealth of the criminal market created by prohibition. This beginning leaves the reader intrigued and eager to learn more; he's not disappointed.The rest of the book traces the history of our drug crusade from its idealistic populist origins, starting in 1901 when McKinley`s a