From: rjesse@us.oracle.com (Robert Jesse)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
Subject: Re: Must-Own Books for Drug Users
Date: 11 Sep 1994 20:32:23 GMT
Message-ID: <34vpgo$7kr@dcsun4.us.oracle.com>

Kleiman, Mark.  _Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results_.
(New York: BasicBooks 1992) 485 pages.

Most of the drug debate in our society focuses on two policies:
libertarian legalization of "drugs," or prohibition of "drugs."
Surely it must have occurred to many people that between these
extremes (and even at the extremes) there are a multitude of options.
Mark Kleiman, a Harvard public policy expert, has written a book that
explores these options clearly, thoroughly, and with an occasional
touch of dry humor.  Kleiman establishes an analytical framework into
which the reader may insert his/her own beliefs about the world -
about economics, crime, the risks associated with various substances,
etc. - and then derive public policies to achieve specific results.
Highly recommended reading.

Plan of the Volume, from the Preface to _Against Excess_:

Part I, "Preliminaries," argues that drug policy inevitably has multiple
goals and is likely to be ill-served by simple policies expressed in
bumper-sticker slogans.

Part II, "Problems," explores the characteristics of drugs that set them
apart from other consumer goods and make them appropriate subjects of
special public policy attention.  Chapter 2, "Drug Abuse and Other Bad
Habits," is about why some users keep hurting themselves; Chapter 3,
"The Other Victims of Drug Abuse," is about how they hurt others.

Part III, "Policies," develops the vocabulary of public actions - laws
and programs - to control drug problems.  The laws - taxes, regulations,
and prohibitions - are the topics of Chapter 4.  Chapter 5 considers the
black markets that are likely to arise from drug laws.  Chapter 6 examines
programs to enfore the laws; Chapter 7 looks at programs to influence
drug-taking behavior by persuasion and to provide helpfor, and impose
control on, problem drug users.

Part IV, "Drugs," applies the analysis developed in the first three parts
to five drugs: alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, tobacco, and heroin.

Part V is a recapitulation.

From Part V, p 388:

Public policy toward drugs involves so many unknown, almost unknowable
facts and so many complicated issues of value that any certainty about
which of two alternative policies is the better is likely to be misplaced.
This book has reached many conclusions and argued for many recommendations,
but most of them could prove to be wrong under plausible factual
circumstances or as measured against defensible sets of values.  Even the
underlying belief that careful reasong will produce better policies than
enthusiasm and emotion is not invariably true; fanaticism can work wonders,
and sometimes, if only by accident, it is deployed in good causes.  But
neither individuals nor nations can remain in a passionate frenzy forever;
eventually we must learn to discuss our drug policies without raising our
voices.

No doubt anyone who has read this far has disagreed with more than one of
the opinions offered.  This is as it should be.  This book was designed to
enable those of its readers who prefer to act on their considered judgements
rather than on their emotions and their prejudices to do so in the drug
policy arean.  That their judgements should be the same as mine was no
part of my purpose.