Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure by Dan Baum

I don't know if there has been a single government policy in my lifetime that has been as damaging as the War on Drugs. If I were ever to run for major office (ha!), I think I could answer almost all questions about domestic policy with five words: End the War on Drugs.

Funding health care? Providing better health care? End the War on Drugs.

Violent crime in cities? End the War on Drugs.

Overpopulated prisons? End the War on Drugs.

Illegal immigrant criminals? End the War on Drugs.

Education in the inner city? End the War on Drugs.

See? This is easy.

I'd lose, of course. Someone would run the "grainy crack pipe" ad against me (grainy crack pipe on screen, with a couple made-up stats about crime and drugs, scary voice over about how I am pro-drug), and down I'd go. But I'd still be right. (That said, the War on Drugs will be very hard to end -- one early step should be to curtail the insane prison sentences (given mostly to young black men). And what will those young men do after being in jail for n>3 years? Find a job? That'll be hard with a felony conviction... You can fill in the rest --> Crime increase or spike in drug addiction --> "We need the War on Drugs back". You get the picture.)

The book was a history of the War on Drugs from its inception to shortly after the election of Bill Clinton. Yep, this book was written over 15 years ago. Sadly, nearly nothing has changed on the legal front. It's a good thorough exploration of how this bipartisan, all levels of government and all branches of government, complete screw-up occurred. If I had to point at one part of it that really made it hum, I'd point at forfeiture, which enabled the federal government essentially to pay local and state police to be foot soldiers in the War on Drugs by allowing them to keep anything they found on someone they were arresting for drug crime or for suspicion of drug crime or knowledge of someone else's drug crime. And I haven't even touched on the racial component of the War on Drugs... (I think forfeiture is a large part of the spike in harassment for DWB. Maybe even 90+% of it.)

Fortunately, I think we'll see decriminalization (and maybe even outright legalization) of pot in the next generation, and that will go a long way towards solving the problem, since the vast majority of forfeiture seizures are probably pot seizures.

Forget health care. The politician who has the guts to end the War on Drugs will make the most significant step forward in domestic policy since the civil rights battles of the 60s.