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

by Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052179997X
• ISBN13: 9780521799973
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Filled with data-rich insights

I'll admit that any book with the work heresies in the title has an automatic advantage in peaking my interest, but this volume does so much more than merely entice. MacCoun and Reuter have done an amazing job of looking that drug prohibition from a new point of view. Frankly, despite the passage of a few years, I believe that this book is absolute essential if one hopes to really understand the controversy over the War on Drugs. Rather than attempt a summary of the contents, let me simply point to three specifics as representative of the wealth of insight the reader will encounter. First, MacCoun and Reuter have expanded the typical dichotomous legalization v criminalization perspectives to include depenalization and commercialization. Counter the arguments of drug prohibitionists, depenalization does not seem to be inextricably intertwined with massive increases in the prevalence of drug use as is anticipated with legalization. Also, legalization may have less negative increases in prevalence without the accompaniment of commercialization. By adding these two considerations, MacCoun and Reuter enable expansion of the debate into potentially fertile areas for improving the consequences of prohibition. Secondly, the careful analysis of the 48 negative consequences of prohibition and the related causal linkage to enforcement, illegal status, and use should be the focus of careful reflection by every reader. In many respects, the damage caused by the War on Drugs is a kind of collateral damage - unintentionally caused by the implementation of US prohibition efforts. Thirdly, MacCoun & Reuter reconceptualize the total harmfulness of illicit drugs as the interaction of three factors: prevalence, intensity, and micro harm (i.e., user self-damage). Much of the criticism of drug prohibition deals with the extensive micro harm without equal weight being given to the total harmfulness to our society. The negative correlation between prevalence and micro harm is among the more interesting possibilities to consider. In summary, it is quite difficult to imagine a more sensitive evaluation of drug prohibition that so carefully considers the US case in light of the European context and the historical experience with legal addictive substances (alcohol and tobacco). I cannot recommend this book more highly.

A Careful and Honest Look at Alternative Drug Policy

"In Drug War Heresies, Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter ask whether drug prohibition makes sense and whether legalization might achieve a better balancing of the costs and benefits associated with drugs and drug policy. They draw on a broad range of social science literature, and they emphasize the lessons provided both by drug prohibition in other places and by prohibitions of other goods, such as alcohol and prostitution. In discussing this evidence, they raise most of the key issues that should be considered in evaluating drug policy. Their book is an excellent starting point for anyone who wishes to understand the debates about prohibition versus legalization.MacCoun and Reuter make a compelling case that many evils typically attributed to drugs result instead from drug prohibition and its enforcement. According to their analysis, prohibition causes increases in property crime because users face elevated prices; increases in violent crime because traffickers cannot resolve disputes using the courts; diminishments of civil liberties owing to the difficulty of detecting crimes without natural complainants; increases in corruption of police and politicians; disruption of countries that produce coca and opium; diminishments of users' health because of poor quality control; increases in the spread of HIV because of prohibition-induced restrictions on clean needles; excessive restrictions on medical uses of drugs; and reductions in respect for the law bred by widespread violation of prohibition-among other consequences.And yet the authors do not endorse legalization. They find great fault with the heavy emphasis on criminal sanctions in current U.S. prohibition, and they believe substantial deescalation to, say, the level of enforcement in western Europe, Canada, or Australia would diminish many of the harms of prohibition while causing only small increases in drug use. Still, they do not endorse legalization. Why not?Their position rests on four arguments: that moving from weak, European-style prohibition to legalization would produce a substantial increase in drug use; that this increase would be a bad thing; that most of the benefits from legalization are achieved simply by deescalating prohibition; and that the effects of legalization are uncertain.""The authors' basic points move in the right direction. They have done a great service in carefully, honestly, and scientifically considering both theory and evidence on the effects of alternative drug policies. Room remains for reasonable persons to disagree about certain pieces of evidence, but if more persons were to analyze drug policy as dispassionately as MacCoun and Reuter, both drug policy and the country would be in far better shape."

An astonishing analysis of the dark side of public policy

This is one of the most comprehensive, objective or "bi-partisan," and current studies available to the general public. Although it is indeed an academic study and is written to influence policymakers, the educated public can easily follow most of the arguments posited by MacCoun and Reuter. Both thinkers have extensive experience in the area of drug policy, both are senior consultants with RAND (Drug Policy Research Center) and have published a considerable amount of literature on the nature of drugs and drug laws. This dynamic text attempts a comparative analysis of vices, such as gambling and prostitution, with that of recreational drug use, including alcohol and tobacco. The purpose of this study is to research whether or not there are any correlations between vices and, if so - can they assist in our understanding of how to regulate drugs and the desires of individuals for drugs. For example, of the kind of comparisons made, is that of prostitution and gambling. Both are legal in Las Vegas, NV - both are thought to be harmful vices, nevertheless, the law has provided a place for them in a legal context - can the same be done for drugs? The text also evaluates extensively, the European models of drug law enforcement and treatment and compares them to America's own models of law and treatment. The authors do not offer any solutions to the drug problem, but what they have done is contribute a comprehensive study with an extensive and diverse amount of data on the subject, something of which has not been achieved as thoroughly as it has been done in this study. The authors also analyze many of the drug reformer's arguments and parse them for consistencies and/or inconsistencies; in the conclusion, they offer a sympathetic gesture to the reformer's contentions because the authors admit to realizing the inanity and harm current drug laws are causing society, but they do so cautiously. They realize that something "must change," but what? and the future can only hold speculations. This book is highly recommended. Another interesting companion study is the Consumer Reports study that was released in 1972. It is comprehensive and treats the many aspects of the "drug problem" in America. See:Breacher, Edward M. et al., Licit and Illicit Drugs: the Consumers Union report on narcotics, stimulants, depressants, inhalants, hallucinogens, and marijuana - including caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. (Boston: Little Brown, 1972).

Drug War Heresies

Drug War Heresies may be the best book ever written about modern U.S. drug policy. Written by a psychologist and an economist, the authors draw on attempts to control other substances (such as alcohol prohibition in the U.S.) and exhaustively examine the alternative and experimental European drug policies that most American readers will find particularly useful. The authors are careful to not impose their values and beliefs into their work, instead focusing on the consequences of alternative drug policies. The result is a persuasive case for policy reform in America that is not doctrinaire. Required reading for all who are interested in illicit drug policy in America.