Drug War Heresies
Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places

The book explains why it is so difficult to accomplish substantial reform of drug policy.

Robert J. MacCoun (Author), Peter Reuter (Author)

9780521799973, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 August 2001

496 pages, 26 b/w illus. 22 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

'This book is without doubt the most scholarly and significant contribution to what has become a passionate but circular debate … overall this is an experts' expert book and it is likely to become the classic text on drug policy reform.' British Medical Journal

This book provides the first multidisciplinary and nonpartisan analysis of how the United States should decide on the legal status of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. It draws on data about the experiences of Western European nations with less punitive drug policies as well as new analyses of America's experience with legal cocaine and heroin a century ago, and of America's efforts to regulate gambling, prostitution, alcohol and cigarettes. It offers projections on the likely consequences of a number of different legalization regimes and shows that the choice about how to regulate drugs involves complicated tradeoffs among goals and conflict among social groups. The book presents a sophisticated discussion of how society should deal with the uncertainty about the consequences of legal change. Finally, it explains, in terms of individual attitudes toward risk, why it is so difficult to accomplish substantial reform of drug policy in America.

1. Preface and overview
2. Drug prohibition: American style
3. The debate
4. Philosophical underpinnings
5. How does prohibition affect drug use?
6. How does prohibition affect drug harms?
7. Other vices: prostitution and gambling
8. Other substances: alcohol and cigarettes
9. US experience with legal cocaine and heroin
10. Learning from European experiences
11. Cannabis policies in the Netherlands
12. Harm reduction in Europe
13. Summary of the evidence and a framework for assessment
14. Projecting the consequences of alternative regimes
15. Obstacles to moving beyond the drug war.

Subject Areas: Laws of Specific jurisdictions [LN], Central government policies [JPQB], Crime & criminology [JKV], Drug & substance abuse: social aspects [JFFH1]