Should marijuana be legalized? The latest Gallup poll reports that exactly half of Americans say "yes"; opinion couldn't be more evenly divided.
Marijuana is forbidden by international treaties and by national and local laws across the globe. But those laws are under challenge in several countries. In the U.S., there is no short-term prospect for changes in federal law, but sixteen states allow medical use and recent initiatives to legalize production and non-medical use garnered more than 40% support in four states. California's Proposition 19 nearly passed in 2010, and multiple states are expected to consider similar measures in the years to come.
The debate and media coverage surrounding Proposition 19 reflected profound confusion, both about the current state of the world and about the likely effects of changes in the law. In addition, not all supporters of "legalization" agree on what it is they want to legalize: Just using marijuana? Growing it? Selling it? Advertising it? If sales are to be legal, what regulations and taxes should apply? Different forms of legalization might have very different results.
Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know(r) will provide readers with a non-partisan primer about the topic, covering everything from the risks and benefits of using marijuana, to describing the current laws around the drug in the U.S. and abroad. The authors discuss the likely costs and benefits of legalization at the state and national levels and walk readers through the "middle ground" of policy options between prohibition and commercialized production. The authors also consider how marijuana legalization could personally impact parents, heavy users, medical users, drug traffickers, and employers.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

This comprehensive volume analyzes dual markets for regulated substances and services, and aims to provide a framework for their effective regulation. A "dual market" refers to the existence of both a legal and an illegal market for a regulated product or service (for example, prescription drugs). These regulations exist in various countries for a mix of public health, historical, political and cultural reasons. Allowing the legal market to thrive, while trying to eliminate the illegal market, provides a unique challenge for governments and law enforcement. Broken down into nine main sections, the book studies comparative international policies for regulating these "dual markets" from a historical, legal, and cultural perspective. It includes an analysis of the markets for psychoactive substances that are illegal in most countries (such as marijuana, cocaine, opiods and amphetimines), psychoactive substances which are legal in most countries and where consumption is widespread (such as alcohol and tobacco), and services that are generally regulated or illegal (such as sports betting, the sex trade, and gambling). For each of these nine types of markets, contributions focus on the relationship between regulation, the emerging illegal market, and the resulting overall access to these services. This work aims to provide a comprehensive framework from a historical, cultural, and comparative international perspective. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in organized crime, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, international relations, and public health.

Should marijuana be legalized? Since 2012 four US states have legalized commercial for-profit marijuana production and use, while Washington DC has legalized possession, growth and gifting of limited amounts of the plant. Other states, and even cities, have decriminalized possession, allowed for medical use, or reduced possession to a misdemeanor. While marijuana is forbidden by international treaties and by national and local laws across the globe, polls show that public support for legalization has continued to increase steadily over time. So why does the issue of marijuana legalization continue to be so controversial? One short answer is that it is an extremely complicated business, with approaches toward legalization just within the United States varying widely. What's more, not all supporters of "legalization " agree on what it is they want to legalize: Just using marijuana? Growing it? Selling it? Advertising it? If sales are to be legal, what regulations and taxes should apply? Different forms of legalization have demonstrated very different results. This second edition of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know (R) provides readers with a non-partisan primer covering everything from the risks and benefits of using marijuana to what is happening with marijuana policy in the United States and abroad. The authors discuss the costs and benefits of legalization at the state and national levels and explore the "middle ground " of policy options between prohibition and commercialized production. The book also considers the personal impact of marijuana legalization on parents, heavy users, medical users, employers, and even drug traffickers.

While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs?
In Drugs and Drug Policy, three noted authorities survey the subject with exceptional clarity, in this addition to the acclaimed series, What Everyone Needs to Know(r). They begin, by defining "drugs," examining how they work in the brain, discussing the nature of addiction, and exploring the damage they do to users. The book moves on to policy, answering questions about legalization, the role of criminal prohibitions, and the relative legal tolerance for alcohol and tobacco. The authors then dissect the illicit trade, from street dealers to the flow of money to the effect of catching kingpins, and show the precise nature of the relationship between drugs and crime. They examine treatment, both its effectiveness and the role of public policy, and discuss the beneficial effects of some abusable substances. Finally they move outward to look at the role of drugs in our foreign policy, their relationship to terrorism, and the ugly politics that surround the issue.
Crisp, clear, and comprehensive, this is a handy and up-to-date overview of one of the most pressing topics in today's world.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults--a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. "When Brute Force Fails" explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade.

Mark Kleiman demonstrates that simply locking up more people for lengthier terms is no longer a workable crime-control strategy. But, says Kleiman, there has been a revolution--largely unnoticed by the press--in controlling crime by means other than brute-force incarceration: substituting swiftness and certainty of punishment for randomized severity, concentrating enforcement resources rather than dispersing them, communicating specific threats of punishment to specific offenders, and enforcing probation and parole conditions to make community corrections a genuine alternative to incarceration. As Kleiman shows, "zero tolerance" is nonsense: there are always more offenses than there is punishment capacity. But, it is possible--and essential--to create focused zero tolerance, by clearly specifying the rules and then delivering the promised sanctions every time the rules are broken.

Brute-force crime control has been a costly mistake, both socially and financially. Now that we know how to do better, it would be immoral not to put that knowledge to work.

While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs?
In Drugs and Drug Policy, three noted authorities survey the subject with exceptional clarity, in this addition to the acclaimed series, What Everyone Needs to Know(r). They begin, by defining "drugs," examining how they work in the brain, discussing the nature of addiction, and exploring the damage they do to users. The book moves on to policy, answering questions about legalization, the role of criminal prohibitions, and the relative legal tolerance for alcohol and tobacco. The authors then dissect the illicit trade, from street dealers to the flow of money to the effect of catching kingpins, and show the precise nature of the relationship between drugs and crime. They examine treatment, both its effectiveness and the role of public policy, and discuss the beneficial effects of some abusable substances. Finally they move outward to look at the role of drugs in our foreign policy, their relationship to terrorism, and the ugly politics that surround the issue.
Crisp, clear, and comprehensive, this is a handy and up-to-date overview of one of the most pressing topics in today's world.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

Should we legalize marijuana? If we legalize, what in particular should be legal? Just possessing marijuana and growing your own? Selling and advertising? If selling becomes legal, who gets to sell? Corporations? Co-ops? The government? What regulations should apply? How high should taxes be? Different forms of legalization could bring very different results. This second edition of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know discusses what is happening with marijuana policy, describing both the risks and the benefits of using marijuana, without taking sides in the legalization debate. The book details the potential gains and losses from legalization, explores the middle ground options between prohibition and commercialized production, and considers the likely impacts of legal marijuana on occasional users, daily users, patients, parents, and employersand even on drug traffickers.