How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out

by Mike Gray

Drug Crazy is a scathing indictment of America's decades-long 'war on drugs,' an expensive and hypocritical folly which has essentially benefited only two classes of people: professional anti-drug advocates and drug lords.

Did you know that a presidential commission determined that marijuana is neither an addicitve substance nor a 'stepping stone' to harder drugs ... only to have President Nixon shelve the embarrassing final report and continue the government's policy of inflated drug addiction statistics? Did you know that several medical experts agree that 'cold turkey' methods of withdrawal are essentially ineffective and recommend simply prescribing drugs to addicts ... and that communities in which this has been done report lower crime rates and reduced unemployment among addicts as a result?

Whether he's writing about the American government's strong-arm tactics toward critics of its drug policy or the reduction of countries like Colombia and Mexico to anarchic killing zones by powerful cartels, Mike Gray's analysis has an immediacy and a clarity worth noting. The passage of 'medical marijuana' bills in California and Arizona (where the bill passed by a nearly 2-to-1 majority) indicates that people are getting fed up with the government's Prohibition-style tactics toward drugs. Drug Crazy just might speed that process along.

Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review: 'The sanity he brings to the subject is refreshing.'

240 pages, hardcover, 6x8.6