Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
by Dan Baum
132 Members (4.00)
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For sheer government absurdity, the War on Drugs is hard to beat. After three decades of increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are more easily available, drug potencies are greater, drug killings are more common, and drug barons are richer than ever. The War on Drugs costs Washington more than the Commerce, Interior, and State departments combined - and it's the one budget item whose growth is never questioned. A strangled court system, exploding prisons, and wasted lives push the show more cost beyond measure. What began as a flourish of campaign rhetoric in 1968 has grown into a monster. And while nobody claims that the War on Drugs is a success, nobody suggests an alternative. Because to do so, as Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders learned, is political suicide. Dan Baum interviewed more than 175 people - from John Ehrlichman to Janet Reno - to tell the story of how Drug War fever has been escalated; who has benefited along the way; and how the mounting price in dollars, lives, and liberties has been willfully ignored. Smoke and Mirrors takes you right into the offices where each new stage was planned and executed, then takes you to the streets where policies have produced bloody warfare. This is a tale of the nation run amok - in a way the American people are not yet ready to confront. show lessTags
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7+ Works 832 Members
Dan Baum is a former reporter with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. His book Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure is a well written, carefully documented, shocking expose of the U.S. government's ineffective, 30-year drug policy. Baum uses his journalism background to document show more with statistics on drug use and abuse the failure of anti-drug efforts since 1967. He believes that the switch from viewing drug abuse as a health problem to drug abuse as a moral problem has ultimately resulted in injustices, especially the loss of Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment constitutional protections. In tracing policies through the administrations of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Baum gives examples of how drug busts not only disenfranchise minorities but also provide police department funding. He is also the author of Citizen Coors: An American Dynasty and Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History, Politics and Government
- DDC/MDS
- 363.4 — Society, Government, and Culture Social problems and social services Public Safety - Police, Crime Investigation
- LCC
- HV5825 .B37 — Social sciences Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Drug habits. Drug abuse
Statistics
- Members
- 132
- Popularity
- 246,699
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 2
