Friday, January 8, 2010

Review of : Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum


I don't know where to begin. This took me a while to finish mostly because each page is packed with information, so it makes for some slow reading at times. Basically, the "War on Drugs" was first waged, and continues to be waged, for political reasons, getting presidents and various politicians elected because they vowed to be "hard on drugs". What that usually translated into was massive amounts of government money spent on law enforcement and prisons. And that's about i...more I don't know where to begin. This took me a while to finish mostly because each page is packed with information, so it makes for some slow reading at times. Basically, the "War on Drugs" was first waged, and continues to be waged, for political reasons, getting presidents and various politicians elected because they vowed to be "hard on drugs". What that usually translated into was massive amounts of government money spent on law enforcement and prisons. And that's about it. Republicans thought that drugs was an individual ailment and those individuals should take responsibility, and Democrats basically thought it was a larger social responsibility, with issues of race and poverty coming into play. The reality is that it's both...which is hard for politicians to get elected on, so they have to choose one or the other.

Baum is clearly biased, not towards drug abuse, but the blatant distortion of statistics and facts that was going on during this approximately 30 year period in American history. He doesn't try to hide this bias in any way, so it's not like he's trying to pull a fast one on the reader. His most obvious bias is towards marijuana, which he portrays as being the scapegoat for the "War on Drugs", mostly because all other users of all other hard drugs didn't really add up enough users to wage a war. So pot was painted the ultimate villain by Mr. Nixon, even though a a commission of Nixon's own choosing concluded that marijuana prohibition was not in the national interest and they recommended legalization. He obviously ignored this report. Nixon wanted to wage a war on the marijuana culture more than the drug itself, as he saw it as a threat to American ideals, something set a part from the mainstream. Again, to use it as a political weapon.

So there's just too much to summarize, but basically the "War on Drugs", at the time, destroyed civil liberties, including most of the 4th Amendment, revamped the prosecutor's role to focus on drug enforcement, clogged up our judicial system without allocating proper funds, and massively distorted drug statistics to scare the American public into thinking their was a drug epidemic sweeping through the schools. And way way way more stuff that is ridiculous. Also, there is no statistical evidence that connects drug abuse with crime. A rise or decline in one doesn't mean squat for the other. Seriously.

"While nobody was saying that drawing hot, psychoactive smoke into the lungs was good for one's health (except perhaps in prescribed medical circumstances), many researchers were saying that a society that tolerates alcohol, tobacco, and bacon-double-cheeseburgers cannot on medical grounds justify jailing people for smoking marijuana." pg. 150

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