Read More at Amazon.com: Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
Product Description
In a blistering expose based on interviews with policy makers and a catalog of damning statistics, journalist Dan Baum shows how America’s war on drugs went from a politically potent campaign play to today’s multibillion-dollar government boondoggle–a “war” that’s run roughshod over Constitutional rights and put a quarter of young black men behind bars without so much as denting the demand for drugs.Amazon.com Review
In a retrospective look at the war on drugs in the United States, journalist Dan Baum calls the nation’s drug policy “as expensive, ineffective, delusional and destructive as government gets.” He examines the Nixon White House’s effort to turn the drug war to political advantage and the Carter Administration’s brief flirtation with decriminalizing marijuana. He also details the cover-ups and blunders of some of the biggest drug busts in the country’s history. Yet despite the policy’s ineffectiveness, at least 85 percent of Americans oppose legalization. Baum sheds light on the reasons for this issue and calls for radical compromise.
Read More at Amazon.com: Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
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Drug & Alcohol News is Associated with Amazon.com
Dan Baum, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, starts his history of the Drug War with the Nixon administration, which, in 1968 declared marijuana public enemy #1. That same year, more people died from falling down stairs than from drug overdoses.
From a strictly political point of view, this was a sensible move. It created a threatening enemy out of whole cloth, and this phantom menace allowed Nixon to run a strong “Law and Order” campaign and push the race buttons of white voters. Nothing galvanizes support like the specter of an invasion, and in this case, the invasion would be of middle class, white, America by anti-establishment youth and black culture. The Drug War behemoth was empowered and allowed to run completely out of control when federal and local law enforcement agencies gained the power to seize the property and assets of drug “suspects” without those suspects ever being charged with, much less convicted of, any crime.
Dan Baum’s book is thoroughly researched and documented, and he doesn’t hide behind smoke screen of feigned objectivity.
Rating: 4 / 5
The book Smoke and Mirrors is a history of the War on Drugs launched by Richard Nixon and that continues to this day. It is very critical of the War and shows the faults of the War and its negative consequences on American society.
The book does not bash just Republicans and the right wing. In fact Baum makes it clear that Nixon’s drug-policy was actually not that bad and certainly better than what was to come. Baum also makes it clear that Democrats jumped on the bandwagon and supported the War on Drugs just as much as the Republicans.
I was for legalization of marijuana before reading Smoke and Mirrors and now I have even more faith in legalizing marijuana. While I was aware of many things Baum mentions, I did not realize how much the Supreme Court has eroded our civil liberities via the War on Drugs. If you want an engrossing read while learning something useful, this is certainly a book to read.
Rating: 5 / 5
In this book Baum traces the great American anti-drug crusade back to 1969, the first year of the Nixon administration. In that year more Americans died of choking on food than from the effects of illegal drugs. But drugs, which were a relatively minor public health problem, became the object of a massive legal, political and cultural offensive against the phenomena known as “The Sixties” – and this offensive has gone on ever since.
Many of the voters who supported Nixon – and later Reagan – were outraged by the high crime rate among blacks and equally outraged by black political and social activism in the sixties (even though the activists were not the sort of blacks who were likely to commit crimes.) These voters were unwilling to spend more tax money to lower the black crime rate by ending poverty. They wanted something that would, in their minds, punish blacks collectively.
The federal government could not attack the sort of crimes that were the object of realistic fears, such as burglary, since these were purely a local matter. However the federal government could go after drugs since they were shipped across state lines.
White House staffers looked over a sociological study that showed that a high proportion of heroin addicts committed theft. They came to the conclusion that heroin addiction caused theft – for money to maintain the habit. The author of the study protested that this was not indicated by the data. But the government anti-drug wizards insisted – by attacking heroin, we will lower crime in general and (unspoken but understood) since a high proportion of heroin users are black, we will punish all blacks symbolically.
Voters for Nixon and Reagan were also often outraged by white youth who grew their hair long and protested the Vietnam war (these two actions were often seen as identical). To attack these youth symbolically the government went after Marijuana, which many of them smoked. Marijuana, which has not been shown to cause a single death, was lumped with the far more dangerous heroin and cocaine. All of them were to be considered simply as “drugs”, equally bad. The “drug problem” was seen as so severe that it was worth doing away with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution which prohibits searches and seizures without a warrant. Baum’s book gives many examples of bizarre injustices in drug law enforcement.
Baum says that the heroin and cocaine problems by themselves would not be enough to justify the huge increase in police powers.
“Marijuana,” he writes, “…is politically the most important illegal drug…without the Marijuana ban, the country’s “drug problem” would be tiny. There wouldn’t be 10 million regular users of illegal drugs in the United States, there would be 2 million.”
In the fall of 1996, not long after Baum’s book was published, the voters of California approved a referendum legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. Baum wrote in the Rolling Stone that this was the biggest victory that the forces opposing the drug war have had so far.
However, Baum’s book is not yet out of date. Under the Democrat Clinton, more people have gone to prison for drugs than under the Republicans Reagan and Bush. Baum’s book provides many eloquent quotes and statistics for activists against America’s ferocious drug laws.
Rating: 5 / 5
Through over 200 personal interviews with 175 people connected with the “War On Drugs” Dan Baum has created the most informative and correct account of the drug war that is availible to man. Nowhere else will you find how the government has targeted drugs as a cheap way to stay elected. Never has the government caused such a false sense of fear then with drugs.
“Smoke And Mirrors” is one of the best books I have ever read. No matter how you feel about the drug war, it is worth your time to review this text. You will be outraged at how much injustice has been dealt, and how the “War” as been often racially biased.
Even if you see drugs as the ultimate evil that plagues our society and is the root of all our problems, it may be because the true facts have never been given until now. By reading this book, you might discover what has been hidden for so long, and see why the government has been so eager to cover up any positive drug notion (ex. Nixon commissions study to find effects of marijuana. They find no significant health detriments, see medicinal value, and reccommend legalization. Nixon discredits study and brushes it under the rug. Later gets reelected on anti-drug platform. $16 billion spent on the war last year.) Please think, and then read this book. I guarantee that it will be time well spent.
Rating: 5 / 5
This extremely well-written journalistic book sheds new light on the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs begins as a campaign ploy and ends up a national hysteria. Although it is harder on Republicans and Conservatives in general, the Democrats become equally complicit in their run to “look tough.” The Democrats sell out to the national hysteria and cause as much damage as the Republicans. It depicts a nation gone crazy, which even now is just beginning to recover.
Rating: 5 / 5