Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places by Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 464 pp., $79.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs by James P. Gray. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. 320 pp., $59.50 cloth,
$18.95 paper.

As costly, damaging, and ultimately absurd as the long-running war on drugs seems to many of us, the hawks continue to dominate the federal policy process. President Bush’s choices for attorney general and drug czar signal that further escalation is the most likely course for the time being. But there are contrary voices in both parties, and some indication that much of the public would be receptive to arguments for a new less-punitive approach.

Both books seek to provide those arguments, but with very different styles. Robert MacCoun and Peter Reuter are two of the leading scholars in the field of drug-policy research. They began their work together at RAND in the center founded by Reuter, and have continued since, moving on to faculty positions at public-policy schools (UC Berkeley and University of Maryland, respectively). Their book is a thorough analytical treatment of the issues in the best tradition of public-policy scholarship. James P. Gray, on the other hand, offers a lawyer's brief in support of his conclusion (that the current regime has failed), made credible in part by his standing and experience as a trial-court judge and federal prosecutor. He makes effective use of first-hand observation, consultation with peers, and a detailed knowledge of recent events. But different as they are, the two books have a similar bottom line, urging a less punitive, more balanced approach to dealing with the drug problem, but stopping well short of legalization. Gray is a forceful, practiced advocate for this conclusion; MacCoun and Reuter are more reluctant to spell it out, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions but guiding them by the force of evidence and logic.

The evidence, according to MacCoun and Reuter (p. 1), suggests that

America’s highly punitive version of prohibition is intrusive, divisive, and expensive and leaves the United States with a drug problem that is worse than that of any other wealthy nation…The most conspicuous harms of drugs currently are those caused by prohibition, namely crime, disorder, corruption, and the diseases related to injecting with dirty needles.

They note the “false dichotomy” between the war on drugs and legalization, the former entailing a “…sweeping but unreflective allegiance to ‘prevalence reduction’—the notion that the only defensible goal for drug policy is to reduce the number of users” (p. 13). The alternative goal of improving the health and welfare of users is denounced as “sending the wrong message,” as if that settled the argument once and for all.

The “war” has had few victories. Three-quarters or more of federal expenditures, which now total almost $20 billion, have gone to fund the array of supply-side enforcement activities. Yet since 1981, there has been a long slide in heroin and cocaine prices, with no reduction in availability (p. 30). While these drugs, and marijuana as well, are still far more pricey than they would be if legal, it is not clear that the costly efforts to interdict supply make much difference at the margin—not clear because the consequences of varying enforcement levels and tactics have scarcely been evaluated. Systematic evaluation has largely been reserved for treatment and prevention activities, and the authors draw rather bleak conclusions from that research. While some forms of treatment appear effective, the potential for reducing abuse through expanded treatment is necessarily limited, while prevention activities (including education and other informational campaigns) appear largely ineffective in reducing drug use.

MacCoun and Reuter turn to “other vices, times, and places” in search of guidance about the likely consequences of reform. Included here are interesting accounts of U. S. experience in regulating or enforcing prohibitions against prostitution, gambling, alcohol, and cigarettes, illustrating the wide array of possibilities for dealing with commodities characterized by allure coupled with a great potential for harm. The authors go on to offer an extended account of European efforts, material that is less familiar and particularly important in illustrating an alternative to the “war” mentality (p. 265):

Western Europe is the original home of the harm reduction movement, the view that drug policy can have goals other than reducing prevalence and that it may be appropriate to sacrifice some reduction in use so as to lower the adverse consequences of that use. The slogan might be “tough on drugs, soft on users” in those countries that have explicitly implemented harm reduction.

Included here are needle-exchange programs, heroin maintenance in Britain and (more recently) Switzerland, and depenalization of cannabis in the Netherlands.

Beyond providing a thorough accounting of drug policy evidence and options, MacCoun and Reuter offer broader insights on the techniques and arguments they are using—that is, a commentary on how to do policy analysis. Three examples illustrate. First and most centrally, they have much to say about the problems and prospects for extracting valid lessons from case studies. Second, they suggest that in making the case for reform, the standard of proof that is appropriate for policy analysis is different than in other frameworks, such as a “political standard” (which tends to conserve the status quo) or a “philosophical standard” (by which they mean a classical liberal position). Third, they offer an interesting discussion of the interrelationships of rhetoric, public opinion, and policy formation, with insights into why public opinion can be so volatile.

Drug War Heresies is a very impressive book, and also quite demanding. Some readers may tire of the tendency to frame arguments without necessarily resolving them, and the attendant list-making: the seven mechanisms by which prohibition affects use (Chapter 5), the nine dimensions along which alcohol is regulated (p. 316), the 27 different harms that are said to be drug-related (p. 320), and so forth. This exhaustive approach illustrates why it pays to be humble in offering predictions or judgments in this complicated area, but it makes for slow reading at times. Such is the cost of presenting analysis rather than opinion. Actually my main complaint is that this book reveals too clearly its provenance: much of the material was published elsewhere, and has not been updated or edited to the extent one might wish. (Words like "“current" ” and "“recent" ” are frequently used to refer to events and data from the mid-1990s.) But I have no qualms about assigning it as the principal text for my class on the regulation of vice and substance abuse.

For those who are looking for a punchier account that covers some of the same territory, I also recommend Judge Gray’s “Indictment.” His emphasis is more on the matters on which he is particularly well qualified, such as the expanding “drugs exception” to the Bill of Rights whereby traditional protections against law enforcement are eroded in the name of enforcing laws against victimless transactions. He has important things to say about corruption, about the distorting influence of asset forfeiture on enforcement priorities and tactics, and about the opportunity cost of drug cases for the criminal justice system. (“Getting tough on drugs inevitably translates into getting ‘soft’ on all other offenses (p. 69).”) He is particularly outraged at the government’s efforts to stop open discussion when it threatens to undermine the “War.” (p. 143):

People who favor our current drug policy often raise an emotional cry that any deviation in course from the War on Drugs would send the ‘“wrong message’message” to our children. They lump together all possible alternatives to our drug policy under the heading of the “legalization of drugs,” and uniformly refuse to debate or even discuss them143).”.

He notes, “One of the most desperate and transparent attempts to prohibit discussion or change of our failed drug policy” occurred in 1998, when Congress actually barred the District of Columbia from spending any money to count the votes on a medical-marijuana initiative. (Eventually a judge intervened to require that the votes be counted, and the measure was found to have passed by a heavy majority. ([p. 146).) ])

Most of Judge Gray’s reference materials are news articles, and his arguments would benefit from closer attention to systematic empirical evidence of the sort offered by MacCoun and Reuter. Gray’s confidence that legal status has little effect on the prevalence of use (p. 143), or that prevention activities have great promise (p. 12), is useful in making his case but not grounded on solid evidence. Nevertheless, although he is a bit careless on some topics, and an unabashed advocate throughout, this is a serious and useful book. At the end he offers a list of mostly sensible reforms as examples of what might be brought about by an open discussion of the issues.

Judge Gray puts it in a nutshell when he says that “we should approach this issue as managers, not as moralists” (p. 10). Reducing the prevalence of use of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana is a worthy goal, but it is not a goal worth pursuing at any cost. We need a more humane and inevitably more complex guide to policy for illicit drugs. MacCoun and Reuter have provided us with such a guide, and a good deal of the empirical base needed to apply it.


PHILIP J. COOK is ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy, Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University.


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