We live in a culture that loves to declare war on things. This is partly because of our Christian background that would have us believe that good and evil actually exist in the world and evil must be rooted out and destroyed as the work of the devil. And it is partly just political expediency because if you can convince people that the evil has a name and you are all about exterminating this threat to all God fearing peoples, then you can get yourself elected to positions of power. And lastly, wars present large corporations with a chance to make insane amounts of money coming directly out of public coffers. Money that can then be put to good use electing officials who will support the cause and maintain the fear of whatever it is we are fighting against.
Reading this book will leave you angry, sad, and frustrated. It is a history of not only the war on drugs but of our complicity in allowing this much misinformation and fear mongering to bring us to where we are today. A country that puts more of its people in prison than any other on the planet mostly for victimless crimes perpetrated largely by minorities. And while the consensuses is that the war is already lost, there is money to be made and already created institutions are difficult to shut down. It is so much cheaper and easier to demonize drug users than it is to uncover and fix the causes that drive then to want this kind of escape to begin with. And so we continue to support more prisons, tougher laws and demonizing minorities while cutting education budgets and programs designed to help people increase the quality of their lives. Addicts will have one or both of these things in common. They have been abused as a child or they find themselves in dire circumstances and see no way out. We are a country that would treat these people in need of help as criminals. Other countries who have not declared this war are dealing with these issues in very constructive ways but then we are also a country that cannot create a single payer health care system even though its works everywhere else. This book needs to read and shared and talked about so that some sanity can be brought to these issues.
