"...an enormously important book. This is especially true because drug policy is a field where tendentiousness
prevails, with the exception of a very few other works...for anybody seriously and earnestly concerned about drug
policy, it is likely to become indispensible."
--The Nation
"...the largest, most sweeping comparative investigations of the contemporary use, regulation, and policing
of various drugs and addictive behaviors..."
--amazon.com
Cambridge University Press Web Site, March, 2002
Summary
This meticulously researched study represents the first effort to provide a nonpartisan and objective analysis
of how the United States should approach the drug legalization question. It surveys what is known about the effects
of different drug policies in Western Europe and what happened when cocaine and heroin were legal in the US a century
ago. The book shows that legalization involves different tradeoffs between health and crime and the interests of
the inner city minority communities and the middle class. The book explains why it is so difficult to accomplish
substantial reform of drug policy.
