Fix

This book is about drug policy in America. It is a celebration of the Drug policy enacted by Nixon and a criticism of the drug war. The book is two layered, the author follows around a worker who deals with drug addicts and talks about his life running a poor under funded agency while at the same time talking about the broader issues. All drugs cause society some problems. Probably the most costly drugs for society are alcohol and tobacco. Heroin and Crack however have a very visible cost in an increase in criminality. Drug dependant people often drift into various forms of crime to support their habits. Other drugs such as cannabis also have side effects and there is evidence that long term use can cause a range of problems. The book suggests that the policy developed by Nixon was in fact the correct policy. That is by making provision for rehabilitation centres for treatment of drug addicts. Rehab centres are cheap by comparison with jails and significantly cut drug use and criminality. The author of the book refers to studies carried out by the RAND Corporation into the cost benefits of such programs to support his case. During the Reagan years the direction of drug policy changed. A number of parents groups had sprung up suggesting that teenage use of cannabis was responsible for a range of adolescent social problems. Money was taken from rehab centres to fund Nancy Reagan's "say not to drugs campaign". In reality the "say no to drugs campaign has been successful." Cannabis and other drug use in American is far lower for adolescents than for other comparable countries. The basic problem was that as resources were taken from rehab centres hard drug use skyrocketed. This in turn led to the substitution of imprisonment as the main response to drug dependant criminality. The cost has been significant with a tremendous social cost of prison construction lessening funds for other government programs such as eduction. The arrest of drug dependant people also has led to massive increases in the imprisonment of Afro American people. This book is one of the more impressive written on one of the significant issues facing American society,

Michael Massing's book is an engrossing account of the evolution of drug policy in the past 30 years. He traces the ineffective twists and turns of the government's approaches, ironically beginning with the promising work of Dr. Jerome Jaffe, the first drug czar in Nixon's first term. His narrative shifts between the policymakers in Washington and the efforts of an outreach worker in Spanish Harlem to help others with virtually no resources. Massing concludes that a lot more resources need to be applied to the treatment of hard core addicts with less for interdiction. He maintains that treatment does work, we know what to do, but have been influenced by fadism all along the way. An obvious example is "Just Say No" but a less obvious one is the effort that suburban parents began in the late '70s to move resources to treat kids for pot smoking. Policy makers in the drug arena will find this book valuable in presenting a case for the enhancement of resources for those most in need.

I suppose that I don't really have the objectivity necessary to adequately review this book. Drug abuse has had a devastating affect on people close to me, and I have born personal witness to both the magnitude of the problem and the inefficacy of our leaders in responding to it. In The Fix, Massing combines reporting, storytelling and advocacy journalism to give us a serious look at the problem, the people affected by it, the people trying to solve it, and the people our government puts in charge of solving it. The most telling point of the book is that those latter two categories have only rarely coincided. Only once, during the first Nixon administration, did our government have a drug program that emphasized making multiple modalities of treatment immediately available to the addict who seeks help. Coincidentally, only once was the incidence of hard core drug abuse, and the criminal and public health problems associated with it significantly diminished. But, since offering treatment to addicts doesn't make nearly the political sound bite that "Death to Drug Kingpins", "Just Say No" or "Three Strikes and You're Out" does, the approach, and the concomitant success it brought was short lived. Our leaders were quite willing to sacrifice an approach with proven success in favor of one which, though unsuccessful, resonated with the prejudices of the electorate. If you think that our government has had a consistent or effective policy towards drugs, read this book. If you think that there is no effective treatment for drug abuse, read this book. If you believe that any of our leaders for the past thirty years has had a clue about the nature or scope of the drug problem in America, read this book. And if you think that William Bennet has any shred credibility as a spokesman for morality, read this book.

The Fix is one of those rare books on the drug issue that rejects both the war on drugs and drug legalization as mirror extremes. Michael Massing, an experienced journalist and MacArthur Fellow with many years of experience in drug policy, reviews the history of the nation's drug policy while also exploring the reality of drug addiction on the streets of East New York. The result is a book that reads like a novel in parts yet is thoroughly grounded in hard analysis. Massing demonstrates the futility of current policy with its military model of a "war" on drugs, explains the political expediency underlying that policy and points out the irony that the last time the U.S. had a workable drug policy was during the Nixon Administration (and Massing is certainly no Nixon lover). If you want to read one book that will provide you with a balanced survey of the quagmire that is drug policy, this is the one to read. As an added bonus, it is EXTREMELY well-written. Highly recommended.

As someone who works in an agency that treats substance abusers, and who therefore is also sensitive to the ways in which society and governmental responses affect our work with these individuals, I truly appreciate Mr. Massings description and analysis of the problem, from various angles. Many books on drugs are opinionated and therefore hard to digest, but Mr. Massings arguments are based in fact and good analysis. I recommend it.