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Debates over the use and abuse of drugs, the laws controlling drugs in this country, and the question of whether or not certain drugs should be legally available have inflamed Americans since the 19th-century, and continue to flourish as America attempts to rage its "war on drugs." Students can ...

Debates over the use and abuse of drugs, the laws controlling drugs in this country, and the question of whether or not certain drugs should be legally available have inflamed Americans since the 19th-century, and continue to flourish as America attempts to rage its "war on drugs." Students can trace the history and development of these arguments, as well as the reactions to them, through this unique collection of over 250 primary documents. Court cases, speeches, laws, opinion pieces, and other documents bring to life the controversies surrounding the issues. Explanatory introductions to documents aid users in understanding the various arguments put forth, while illuminating the significance of each document.

In Our Right to Drugs, Thomas Szasz shows that our present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the U.S. government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I, however, the free market in drugs was but a dim memory, if that ...

In Our Right to Drugs, Thomas Szasz shows that our present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the U.S. government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I, however, the free market in drugs was but a dim memory, if that. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality or unfairness of our drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws, which place people under lifelong medical tutelage. 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 U.S. drug prohibitions from protecting us from being fooled by "misbranded" drugs to protecting us from harming ourselves by self-medication-defined as "drug abuse". And he reminds us that the choice between self-control and state coercion applies to all areas of our lives, drugs being but one of the theaters in which this perennial play may be staged. A free society, Szasz emphasizes, cannot endure if its citizens reject the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility and if the state treats adults as if they were naughty children. In a no-holds-barred examination of the implementation of the War on Drugs, Szasz shows that under the guise of protecting the vulnerable members of our society--especially children, minorities, and the sick--our government has persecuted and injured them. Leading politicians persuade parents to denounce their children, and encourage children to betray their parents and friends--behavior that subverts family loyalties and destroys basic human decency. And instead ofprotecting blacks and Hispanics from dangerous drugs, this holy war has allowed us to persecute them, not as racists but as therapists--working selflessly to bring about a drug-free America. Last, but not least, to millions

Society's drug problem will persist, and debates over how to solve it will continue, getting nowhere, until we define our terms. This book is an effort to do just that -- to parse the legal, moral, and philosophical underpinnings for any discussion of drug policy.

Does liberal political theory, with ...

Society's drug problem will persist, and debates over how to solve it will continue, getting nowhere, until we define our terms. This book is an effort to do just that -- to parse the legal, moral, and philosophical underpinnings for any discussion of drug policy.

Does liberal political theory, with its commitment to individual freedom, offer any guidance in the matter of drugs, particularly regarding their legal status? Do the commitments that citizens of liberal democracies make -- commitments to ideals such as rationality, equality, justice, and democratic forms of decision-making -- have implications for drug policy? These are the questions addressed in this volume, which explores the possibilities and limitations of philosophical reflection on this pressing, practical social issue.

The authors, distinguished political and legal philosophers, search out the justification of policies that manage problems of drug consumption and social disintegration, but do so in keeping with the moral andpolitical commitments of a liberal democratic society. Their subjects range from the rationality or irrationality of drug consumption to the scope of liberty; from the proper aims of legislation to the rhetoric of the war on drugs, particularly as deployed by former "Drug Czar" William Bennett.