Under the Influence: The Disinformation Guide to Drugs

I found this book to be surprising when I first opened it. I had been waiting for its release, having heard that Preston Peet was looking for people with a history and/or knowledge of what Prohibition and "The War On Drugs" is all about. I suppose, for some reason, I was expecting a rehash of the statistics that all add up to show what a dismal failure the War On Drugs really is; stats which are contained and which most certainly do show. But what surprised me most I guess, was the amount of personal experience contained within the pages. There are any number of glimpses and personal insights into "The War" and into the lives led by the contributors during these oppressive decades. There are numerous personal anecdotes; some quite chilling, many of them humorous, all of them thought provoking. These are told by people of whom many of us will have already heard. But there is also good representation from people on the periphery, or at least persons not normally associated with righting the wrong that we know of by it's more formal name-----The War on Drugs; perhaps the greatest hoax of the 20th century, something that the contributors to this book make quite clear.