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摘要
摘要
Why have our drug wars failed and how might we turn things around? Ask the authors of this hardhitting expos#65533; of U.S. efforts to fight drug trafficking and abuse. In a bold analysis of a century's worth of policy failure, Drug War Politics turns on its head many familiar bromides about drug politics. It demonstrates how, instead of learning from our failures, we duplicate and reinforce them in the same flawed policies. The authors examine the "politics of denial" that has led to this catastrophic predicament and propose a basis for a realistic and desperately needed solution.
Domestic and foreign drug wars have consistently fallen short because they are based on a flawed model of force and punishment, the authors show. The failure of these misguided solutions has led to harsher get-tough policies, debilitating cycles of more force and punishment, and a drug problem that continues to escalate. On the foreign policy front, billions of dollars have been wasted, corruption has mushroomed, and human rights undermined in Latin America and across the globe. Yet cheap drugs still flow abundantly across our borders. At home, more money than ever is spent on law enforcement, and an unprecedented number of people--disproportionately minorities--are incarcerated. But drug abuse and addiction persist.
The authors outline the political struggles that help create and sustain the current punitive approach. They probe the workings of Washington politics, demonstrating how presidential and congressional "out-toughing" tactics create a logic of escalation while the criticisms and alternatives of reformers are sidelined or silenced.
Critical of both the punitive model and the legalization approach, Drug War Politics calls for a bold new public health approach, one that frames the drug problem as a public health--not a criminal--concern. The authors argue that only by situating drug issues in the context of our fundamental institutions--the family, neighborhoods, and schools--can we hope to provide viable treatment, prevention, and law enforcement. In its comprehensive investigation of our long, futile battle with drugs and its original argument for fundamental change, this book is essential for every concerned citizen.
评论 (2)
Kirkus评论
A scholarly attack on America's drug policy. The authors of this tome, all public policy analysts or academics, study the history of the current war on drugs and conclude that it has been misguided from its inception. The question of drug use, they argue, is a public health issue, not the moral quandary that so many politicians claim it to be. Despite their doctoral-thesis-like approach, the authors make fascinating points about America's complex relationship with drugs: In the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalogue, for example, a kit containing syringes and a vial of morphine could be had for just $1.50. By 1914, laws were in place to control drug use. But these early laws did not prevent drug use; they merely restricted it to those who purchased it from a physician ``in good faith,'' and records were kept of all such transactions. This tolerance, however, had worn thin by the Nixon era, and it was at that time, the authors write, that America's real trouble with drugs began. From then on, America has pursued the zero-use goal typified by the ``Just Say No'' campaign. The costly Pyrrhic victory of the drug war has indeed lowered the number of drug users, but the authors note that only casual use has dropped; the number of intravenous drug and cocaine users, who are responsible for 80 percent of the costs associated with drug use, has skyrocketed. The authors conclude that the zero-use model is outdated and that the war on drugs should be refocused to a war on the roots of drug use--poverty, poor health education--and a change in our culture's heavy reliance on licit drugs to cure our ills. Compelling arguments and an excellent use of data make this report invaluable in an election year. (For two more studies of the drug wars, see Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, p. 653, and Jill Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs and Pipe Dreams, p. 728.)
Choice 评论
In the contemporary political climate this book is unquestionably apropos. The authors, three well-informed academic experts on counternarcotics policies, provide a well-organized, well-written, and well-researched critique of Washington's "politics of denial." Drug policy has been mired in get-tough measures of a "punitive paradigm" that plays well with voters, but has clearly failed, caused great "collateral damage" within society, and blocked more rational and successful public health solutions implied in a "public health paradigm." Although the authors consider the legalization approach, they argue that a new public-health strategy will do more to "heal the suffering caused by drug abuse and addiction." The logic of their overall critique is simple but damning: the current punitive policy is fundamentally flawed because misconceived; no amount of escalation in money or effort can deliver victory. Especially salient to the current drug policy debate is the authors' challenge to the central but simplistic tenet of the punitive model that "drugs cause crime." The authors' presentation and evaluation of alternatives is more appropriate for course readings than Dan Baum's Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (1996), and turns more on domestic politics than Paul B. Stares's Global Habit: The Drug Problem in a Borderless World (CH, Oct'96). Although what the book says is not new, how it says it is important and challenging, and will appeal to all readers interested in a renewed debate about the drug problem. All levels. W. Q. Morales University of Central Florida