An Analytic Assessment of US Drug Policies

"This is the best analysis of what we’re currently doing about drug abuse and what we could do about drug abuse. This is not in the Boyum and Reuter book, but I personally think that what we are doing is mostly we are putting a lot of people in prison and telling a lot of lies. Drug-prevention education is not notorious for its factual content. It overstates the dangers and minimises the distinctions between drugs, and overemphasises the distinction between illegal and legal drugs. What we should do is to have law-enforcement that is designed to minimise the damage done by drug dealing, as opposed to trying to minimise drug supply. We should make people who are heavy drug users and active criminals stop using when they are on probation or on parole. I mean protecting the neighbourhood from the impact of drug dealing, which means focusing on the dealers who are the most violent. Not all dealers are equally violent and the current enforcement system actually creates advantages for the more violent over the less violent. Witnesses are afraid to testify against people who are reputedly scary. It’s easier to make people testify against the dealers that nobody is scared of. Well, it was certainly very well received and a lot of the things mentioned are now going on, but it definitely wasn’t a bestseller. It deserved to be."