Title: DRUG CRAZY: HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS AND HOW WE CAN GET OUT
Author: Mike Gray
Info: 251 pages. Random House. $23.95

"Drug Crazy" is not the best critique of the absurd drug wars the American
government has waged with varying levels of intensity since around 1914 -
American University law professor Arnold Trebach's book from the early and
mid-1980s, along with Auburn University economist Bruce Thornton's more
recent book on the economics of prohibition are more systematic and
intellectually disciplined - but it's the best one produced this year. And
since Mike Gray is a screenwriter by trade (he did "The China Syndrome,"
among others) it has a narrative urgency and accessibility that more
academic efforts sometimes lack.

Mike Gray knows how to tell a story with tragic episodes and implications
and he tells it well. It's focused on the last couple of decades, bringing
drama and a tragic sensibility to the story.

The story is familiar enough.

Initially goodhearted people believe they're protecting society from
substances that do have real perils, choose to do it with the blunt
instrument of prohibition (again, that simplifying urge) and eventually
become entrenched interests with turf to protect more than social crusaders.

In the process they facilitate massive (and massively brutal) criminal
enterprises, ruin countless human lives, shred the Constitution (the Fourth
Amendment is less than a remnant these days), turn law-enforcement
officials who start out believing they are doing good into cold-hearted,
sometimes brutal and often corrupt enforcers, fill prisons with non-violent
"offenders" themselves and make the problem worse.

The success of medical marijuana initiatives in various states this
November suggest that voters are starting to move beyond the craziness, but
officials lag far behind.

A return to sanity and freedom can't happen quickly enough, but will
probably take a good deal more persuasion and organizing. Mike Gray's book
should help the process along just a bit.

Checked-by: Richard Lake