Szasz (Psychiatry/SUNY at Syracuse) at his abrasive best, skewering
the shibboleths of the War On Drugs and giving historical context
to the current national hubbub. The prohibition of drugs abrogates
our constitutional right to property; Americans have lost the
freedom to control their bodies; until 1914, Americans had
unrestricted access to drugs of their choice without government
control of the market: Thus begins this reasoned and passionate
treatise, in which Szasz denounces both the prohibitionists ("the
War On Drugs is itself a giant quackery") and the legalizers -
"paternalistic prohibitionists" whose agenda, the author says, is
to transfer control of drugs to the medical system and to continue
prohibiting substances, albeit only certain ones (e.g., tobacco
rather than marijuana). After a scathing indictment of Nancy
Reagan's "moronic anti-drug slogan" and her encouragement of
children who report their drug-using parents to the police, Szasz
dissects a cast of antidrug crusaders (Father Bruce Ritter, Betty
Ford, Kitty Dukakis, William Bennett) and concludes that drug
education is the "name we give to the state-sponsored effort to
inflame people's hatred and intolerance of other people's drug
habits." Turning to legalization proponents - Lester Grinspoon,
Ethan Nadelman, Eric Sterling, William F. Buckley, Jr. - Szasz
analyzes their proposals as new prohibition schemes. Why do we fear
making drugs freely available? Because people would choose "an easy
life of parasitism over a hard life of productivity" and become
"drug-crazed" criminals? According to Szasz, economic productivity,
crucial for the survival of society, has "nothing to do with drugs
but has everything to do with family stability, cultural values,
education, and social policies." And, as for crime, it is caused
not by drugs but by their prohibition. Places the rhetoric and the
players in clear positions on the board, whether or not you agree
with the Szasz prescription. (Kirkus Reviews)
In ""Our Right to Drugs"", Szasz shows how the present drug war
started at the beginning of this century, when the US government
first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines.
By the end of World War I the free market in drugs was but a dim
memory. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality and
unfairness of drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects
of prescription laws, which place people under lifelong medical
supervision. The result is that most Americans today prefer a
coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in
drugs. Szasz stresses the consequences of the fateful
transformation of the central aim of US drug prohibitions: from
protecting the public from being fooled by mis-branded drugs to
protecting them from harming themselves by self medication. He
emphasises that a free society cannot endure if the state treats
adults as if they were truant children and if its citizens reject
the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility. After
discussing the racial aspects of drug prohibition (eg. drug
enforcers are far more likely to accost blacks than whites), Szasz
suggests a connection between drug prohibition and the personal
dread of the availability of an easy and pleasurable way to commit
suicide.
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