Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, applauds these two books for making a “powerful case” against the war against drugs, which “is making Americans neither safe nor better off.” 0nce, alcohol and tobacco were banned but now are legal since our experiment with banning the sale of liquor failed. 0nce cocaine and marijuana were actually legal but are now forbidden. The irony doesn’t escape the two authors. “Prohibition,” argues Joel Miller, “is supposed to make America better. In reality it makes it manifestly worse—just like a drug trip gone bad.” It creates crime and criminals, Bandow argues, and leads to corruption among those sworn to uphold the law. “No other factor inflates corruption as much or as perniciously as drug prohibition,” writes Miller. 0ther casualties of the drug war are privacy and the institution of draconian Rockefeller-like sentences, where non-violent petty offenders are given sentences ranging as high as 20-25 years. (Murderers, rapists and corporate and government crooks often receive far more lenient punishments).

0ther than decriminalization or legalization, writes Bandow, “the only hope may be to treat drugs as a moral, spiritual, and health problem, rather than a legal problem.” In the end, concludes Jeffrey Miron, “the goals of prohibition are questionable, the methods are unsound and the results are deadly.”

Washington Times, January 23, 2005