Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs Is Destroying America

Which is worse, drug abuse or the war on drugs? This book makes the question easy to answer. The costs of our misguided effort to stop people from self-medicating with certain chemicals has been horrendous: billions of tax dollars spent, tens of thousands of nonviolent offenders thrown into prison, the creation of criminal gangs and the funding of international terrorists, the militarization of our police forces and the loss of property and privacy rights. And the result? After nearly 40 years of the drug war, illegal drugs are as available as ever. The war will never be won, Miller argues. Salaried bureaucrats can never defeat ambitious entrepreneurs eager to score in the world’s most profitable business. And why are the profits so great? Duh, because the drugs are prohibited and the business is risky. Remove the prohibition, put the cops to work catching people who steal, rape and murder, let society, not government, deal with drug abuse, and watch how the problem solves itself, he argues convincingly.