Drug Crazy: How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out [Paperback]

Mike Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0415926475 | ISBN-13: 978-0415926478 | Edition: 1

Over the last fifteen years, American taxpayers have spent over $300 billion to wage the war on drugs--three times what it cost to put a man on the moon. In Drug Crazy, journalist Mike Gray offers a scathing indictment of this financial fiasco, chronicling a series of expensive and hypocritical follies that have benefited only two groups: professional anti-drug advocates and drug lords.

The facts are alarming. More than twenty-five years ago, a presidential committee determined that marijuana is neither an addictive substance nor a "stepping stone" to harder drugs, but the embarrassing final report was shelved by a government already heavily invested in "the war against drugs". Many medical experts recommend simply prescribing drugs to addicts, and communities that have done this report a lower crime rate and reduced unemployment among drug users.

In a riveting account of how we got to this impasse-- discriminatory policies, demonization of users, grandstanding among both lawmakers and lawbreakers -- conventional wisdom is turned on its head. Rather than a planned assault on the scourge of addiction, the drug war has happened almost by accident and has been continually exploited by political opportunists.

A gripping account of the violence, corruption, and chaos characterizing the drug war since its inception, Mike Gray's incisive narrative launches a frontal attack on America's drug orthodoxy. His overview of the battlefield makes it clear that this urgent debate must begin now.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Arguing that the federal government's $300-billion campaign to eradicate drug use over the last 15 years has been a total failure, Gray calls for legalization of drugs and government regulation of their sale, with doctors writing prescriptions to addicts. Although he scants specifics as to how this would work and the potential consequences, his outspoken brief for decriminalization is bolstered by a revealing history of drug use in America. A Hollywood screenwriter, TV producer and director, Gray brings a filmic sense of drama and action to a gritty, scorching look at the failure of America's war on drugs. As he jump-cuts from Al Capone's syndicate in Prohibition-era Chicago to the abortive Reagan/Bush campaign to control Latin American drug traffic, Gray maintains that hardcore addicts, a small minority of drug users, have served as a scapegoat for politicians and lawmakers, with the nation's "moral focus" selectively shifting from opium and morphine in the first two decades of this century, to alcohol, then to marijuana in the early 1930s, to crack cocaine today. "It would seem that if Americans are to have any say at all in what their teenagers are exposed to," he concludes, "they will have to take the drug market out of the hands of the Tijuana Cartel and Gangster Disciples, and put it back in the hands of doctors and pharmacists where it was before 1914." Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (January 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415926475
• ISBN-13: 978-0415926478
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone needs to read this book. April 22, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

It's amazing that something as utterly futile and damaging to society as the war on drugs can be escalated year after year and receive so little resistance from the public at large. Our government seems obsessed with repeating the social disaster of alcohol prohibition on a much grander scale than in the 1920's. We've learned nothing in the past 80 years.

This book scares me. It provides insight into the lengths that our government will go to supress information, discussion, and research which even suggests that there might be workable common-sense alternatives to the War On Drugs. If the people that founded our country could see what's been done to their beloved Constitution in the name of "protecting society", they would be sick. In order to get tough on crime we need to eliminate the black-market and those criminals who become rich and powerful from it. LEGALIZATION - REGULATION - EDUCATION - REHABILITATION. These are our only hopes for a solution and anyone with even a basic understanding of the problem knows this. The War On Drugs is essentially a domestic Viet-Nam which is being fought against our own citizens.

Read this book and be afraid.......be very afraid.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning from the lessons of history March 5, 2000

By Stephen B. Cobb

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Those who forget the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them, and unfortunately the disaster of alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s occurred too long ago for most of us to remember it. Fortunately, Drug Crazy builds a bridge to that time, from whose lessons we can draw guidance today. That the Prohibition experiment (which was at least started and ended democratically, with Constitutional amendments) caused so much damage--especially crime, including the highest murder rate in US history--is a tragedy, but that we have not learned from that tragic experiment and are repeating the mistake on an even greater scale...that is indeed a crime. Drug Crazy goes on to trace the tragicomic escalation of the Drug War from its racist origins to its current heights of madness. This well-researched book is highly recommended for understanding how self-righteous and self-serving bureaucrats got us into the Drug War, and how we can get ourselves out.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent voice in the wilderness March 30, 2000

By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This is an anti-"war on drugs" book-for another see Dirk Chase Eldredge's Ending the War on Drugs: A Solution for America (1998)-and a good one emphasizing both the current stupidity and past stupidities. The author makes the point that the use of addictive drugs is not as bad as middle America would like to believe. Gray points to studies showing that people addicted to heroin (for example) can hold down jobs and be "productive" citizens at a maintenance level, a truth that the "drug war industry" wants to keep hidden. However, junkies can't be productive when they have to hustle and commit crimes to support their habit. Hence the so-called war on drugs, which artificially keeps the price of street drugs high, works to keep users unproductive (not to mention criminal).

Gray also makes the familiar point that this is the sort of thing that some humans will always do. Just as a certain percentage of the population will always be unemployed, a certain percentage will turn to drug addiction-Prohibition all over again.

Less familiar however is the idea that street drugs and street drug users supply our society with a target for hate now that the "evil empire" of communism has largely expired. Ordinary people can sit around and get morally worked up about the evil of drugs the way they once got worked up about the "red menace." We might be in for a perpetually divided society. If we didn't have the druggies, whom would we hate?

More ominous for the present society though is the possibility that the war on drugs, by supporting the price of street drugs the way tobacco farmers would like us to support the price of tobacco, has increased drug use by making it into a hugely profitable business. Since we are a capitalist society that celebrates financial success above all else, it is not surprising that the illegal drug business is seen as glamorous by a significant percentage of our young people.

Even scarier is the very sad truth that "the war" continues to be "waged" as a means to support the huge criminal justice bureaucracy that it created!

With this last point in mind, Gray's way out of the mess through the decriminalization of street drugs isn't likely to happen any time soon.