WAR ON DRUGS SACRIFICED CIVIL LIBERTIES, SCHAUMBURG AUTHOR ARGUES

Maximizing Harm, $12.95, 180 pages

Thoroughly documented scholarly treatises are supposed to be dull. Not this
time.

In making his case for ending our government's 25-year war against drugs,
Stephen Young of Schaumburg has written a book that is fascinating,
shocking, frustrating, heartbreaking, sometimes downright horrifying - but
never dull.

Young chronicles dozens of attempts to eradicate the use of drugs
throughout the ages - including executions of tobacco users in 17th century
Russia. Young's premise is that all of them have failed.

Lest you think times have changed, Young holds up the example of William
Bennett, the nation's drug czar at the time, who appeared on a 1989 "Larry
King Live" show and agreed with a caller who drug dealers should be beheaded.

In such a climate, Young argues, it is not hard to understand how our civil
liberties have been among the first casualties of the drug war, with
widespread drug testing, searches and multi-year prison sentences for
possession of even small amounts of illegal drugs.

Young sets out to prove the war on drugs is counterproductive, then poses
this question: Why does it continue? He suggests the answer: That certain
powerful special interest groups benefit by its continuance, such as large
pharmaceutical companies that would suffer financially if certain of their
drugs were forced to compete with cheaper and more effective substances
such as marijuana.

Young, a freelance writer, also edits DrugSense Weekly, an e-mail
compilation of drug-related news items.

In "Maximizing Harm," Young's presentation of the central issues in the
drug war - why it can't work, who gets hurt, who profits,
why it doesn't end and what we all can do - is well-researched and persuasive.