Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have always wondered why the subject of drug use, addiction and legalization of drug use in the United States has been so polarized. In my years of experimenting with drugs such as Marijuana, amphetamines etc. I learned there are obvious reasons to use caution in the use of all drugs,whether street or legal ones. I find it interesting that all the attention from the press and govenment is always focused on the illegal street drugs and users, yet statistical facts bear out the reality that prescription drug addicts out number street addicts by a hugh margin. I find the book DRUG CRAZY, to be a breath of fresh air and sanity, documenting the real story of the genesis of drug laws and attitudes in this country. Any law that is legislated and enforced based on lies, manipulation of facts is not a law that belongs in a Republic such as ours. Mr. Gray has done an outstanding job in researching the actual documented history of drugs in america. I do not advocate the use of drugs for anyone, especially our youth, that is a personal decision made by free individuals who must take personal responsibility for that decision based on a study of the facts of each drug. This cannot be done if those facts are distorted or deleted from view. If you are confused by all the claims made by those who advocate the WAR ON DRUGS then please, please read this book. Your jaw will drop open when you find out how our present drug laws have come about.

I have recently finished reading an excellent book about what is probably the most important issue in America today, the War on Drugs. Titled "Drug Crazy" (How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out Of It) by Mike Gray, it is a candid expose of the political hot potato that presents a greater threat to the Bill of Rights than most people suspect. Well organized, almost conversationally written and thoroughly annotated, it is a fast read - hard to set down. I breezed through it in two days, and then spent a couple of hours on-line spot checking some of his citations. It's all there. This is not the raving of some conspiracy theorist; rather, it is an appeal to reason, a revealing look at the many sides of a complex issue that has been thus far addressed with only the most simplistic remedies. Read it. It could change your perspective on a lot of things. It is probably the most important book you will read this year.

Book Review : Drug Crazy by Mike Gray (Random House, N.Y.- June, 1998)

America's War on Drugs, declared originally by Richard Nixon and waged with varying degrees of enthusiasm by every President since, has become a nearly invulnerable monster, thriving on its own failures and seemingly capable of destroying anyone reckless enough to speak out against it. Its simplistic central premise- drugs pose unthinkable dangers to our children, and therefore must be prohibited- has helped elect legions of politicians who then cite the latest drug scare as reason for tougher crack-downs, harsher laws, and more prisons. So completely has this idea of "illicit drugs" become society's default setting, and so beholden are politicians and others to it, the policy itself receives no critical scrutiny from government and little from academics dependent of federal funding. "Legalization" is a deadly brickbat hurled indiscriminately at all critics without thought that in a society based on capitalism, it is the illegal markets which are abnormal.

Although several scholarly, historically accurate books have pointed out shortcomings of this policy since the late Sixties, not one author has effectively attacked drug prohibition as a policy based on a completely false premise, incapable of preventing substance abuse problems; indeed, certain to make them worse. None, that is, until Mike Gray. A professional from the film world, Gray may have written the book no one else has yet been able to: a concise, readable, historically accurate, and well documented indictment of our drug policy. Very few reading his book all the way through will see the drug war the same way they did before. A major question then becomes: how many people will read it? Will it sink without a trace, overlooked like so many earlier criticisms of official policy- or will it be discovered by a public growing increasingly disillusioned by a perennial policy failure which is jamming prisons, impoverishing schools and colleges and effectively canceling! many Constitutional guarantees of personal freedom? Read by enough people, "Drug Crazy" could do for drug reform what "Silent Spring" did for the environment in 1962.

Like the film maker he is, Gray opens with a tight close up: Chicago police on a drug stake-out. The view quickly expands to the futility of enforcement against Chicago's massive illegal market. first from the perspectives of an elite narcotics detective and then through the eyes of a dedicated public defender. A comparison with Chicago seventy years ago during Prohibition reveals that police and the courts were equally unable to suppress the illegal liquor industry for exactly the same reasons: the overwhelming size and wealth of the criminal market created by prohibition. This beginning leaves the reader intrigued and eager to learn more; he's not disappointed.

The rest of the book traces the history of our drug crusade from its idealistic populist origins, starting in 1901 when McKinley`s assassination thrust a youthful TR into the White House. The 1914 Harrison Act, purportedly a regulatory and tax law, was transformed by enforcement practice into federal drug prohibition with the assistance of the Supreme Court. Drug prohibition not only survived the demise of Prohibition, but emerged with its bogus mandate strengthened.

Thirty years of determined and unscrupulous management by Harry Anslinger, the J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics shaped drug prohibition into what would eventually become a punitive global policy. Anslinger was dismissed by JFK in 1960, but not before politicians had discovered the power of the drug menace to garner both votes and media attention.

Illegal drug markets have since thrived on the free advertising of their products which inevitably accompanies intense press coverage of the futile suppression effort and dire official warnings over the latest drug scare. This expansion was accelerated when Nixon declared the drug war in 1972. Gray covers that expansion beyond our borders in Colom! bia ("River of Money"), in Mexico (Montezuma's Revenge"), and also at home ("Reefer Madness"). He also describes how some European countries have blunted the most destructive effects of our policy forced on them by the UN Single Convention Treaty ("Lessons from the Old Country").

In his final chapter, Gray opines that the push to legitimize marijuana for medical use may have exposed a chink in the heretofore impregnable armor of drug prohibition. Beyond that, he believes that the policy, having thrived on relentless intensification, can't allow relaxation without risking the sort of scrutiny which might reveal its intrinsic lack of substance, therefore, any change must come from outside government. He doesn't offer a detailed recipe for a regulatory policy to replace drug prohibition; rather he suggests that it will be very similar to that which replaced alcohol Prohibition after Repeal in 1933- a collection of state based programs, sensitive to local needs and beliefs.

There is a desperate need for this book to be read and discussed by hundreds of thousands of thinking citizens. The pied piper of drug prohibition has beguiled our politicians and led us dangerously close to the edge of an abyss. Mike Gray's warning has hopefully come just in time and could itself be a major factor in initiating needed change of direction toward sanity.

Thomas J. O'Connell, MD

Great Book

i don't want to sit here and repeat the praises from the other reviews, but i just got done reading this joint and i thought i'd put my 2 cents in.

This book isn't an encyclopedia of statistics & reports on the Drug War like some books i've seen on the subject......it's easy-to-read and pretty short (about 200 pages), which is good because we need everybody in America to understand EXACTLY what's going on here without puttin' them to sleep......Mike Gray gives the average reader enough hard evidence and statistics to shut up any prohibitionists out there determined that stricter sentences & harder laws will make this problem "go away"......sorry, but it ain't happenin'

personally, the only parts of the book that i could do without is the first chapters telling stories about the hood and the dope dealings in Chicago by the GD's, and the last few chapters with stories of people who could benefit from Medical Marijuana but can't get it due to our current laws........to me they were old news and kind of boring, but i can definatly see why they're there.....to somebody disconnected from the battlefield in the hood, or somebody who is unfamiliar with the medical uses of weed and the people who could use that, i can see how those chapters would put a human face on the distant problems that they don't actually HAVE to deal with on a day to day basis

Most people can't see the forest for the trees, and what Mike Gray does with this book is take a HUGE problem that is usually looked at as smaller, isolated issues (the rise in drug use among kids, packed prisons, uneven racial statistics) and basically put it in "The Big Picture"........from the Racist Propaganda & false statistics that started the "War", to the Drug Wars in south america fueled by america's appetite for the product

Even if your already familiar with the situation, this is an interesting read.......it's crazy to me to think that i'm a 19 year old kid, from the hood, with no college education, reading some books i bought from down the street, but it seems like the people up in Washington (supposedly the best & brightest we have to offer to lead our country) don't have any reason or ambition to want to reform the biggest failure in American history

Knowledge is Power

Mike Gray's _Drug Crazy_ repeats many of the arguments against the "War on Drugs" that you will find in other books but does so more eloquently and cogently. _Drug Crazy_ is a truly depressing book, it shows that the "War on Drugs" is not only futile, but is stupid and evil as well. A definite must-buy for any friends or acquaintances who believe in this most destructive and futile of wars.

Adding to the praise submitted by the other readers I wish to point out that this book is also of great relevance to people outside US engaged in the quest for a more sane global society. Although, as Mr. Gray points out, the situation is somewhat better in some European countries, I must add that in many cases it is not. Here in Norway we have blindly adopted the US policy on drugs, and we are now paying the price. Comparing our alarmingly high death-rate among heroin-users in Oslo with numbers from Amsterdam or other big European cities practising a more humane policy towards drug-users, only serves to confirm Mr. Gray's reflections and facts about the futility of the "Holy Crusade" against drugs and its users.

This book is a devastating broadside to those who believe we must continue the War On Drugs. Gray does not even have to argue why we should end it; he simply lets the facts and terrible history of drug prohibition itself state the case for him. Everyone - conservative, liberal and everyone in between - simply MUST read this book if you care about preserving liberty, reducing crime and reducing all the myriad harm done by drugs and drug addiction. I found myself becoming angry at the astounding devastation the War On Drugs has wreaked on our constitution, individual freedoms, innocent and non-innocent human beings, the integrity of our police forces and common sense. Any honest person will find themselves persuaded that the War On Drugs is far worse than drugs themselves.