• Our 2001 British J ournal of Psychiatry paper presented analyses and arguments that also appear in Chapter 10 of the book.  That article led to two critical comments by Dutch researchers.   See:

                    Comment by de Zwart and van Laar (2001) and our reply (2001) which appeared in a separate issue of BJP.

                    Comment by Abraham, Cohen, and Beukenhorst (2001) and our reply (2001) which appears below their comment.

• Unfortunately, an omitted footnote to Table 11.1 (page 252 as well as a similar Table 1 in our 2001 paper in British Journal of Psychiatry) creates the incorrect impression that our US source for the "approximately age 18" comparisons was the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.  In fact, the source for those two rows was the school-based Monitoring the Future school survey. This is important because the comparison was to the school-based Trimbos survey in the Netherlands.  This led to misunderstandings of our presentation by critics of the BJP paper.  Mea culpa!

• In general, we prefer not to argue with particular reviews; we post both the good and bad ones and let readers decide for themselves.  But one frequent comment is that our title -- "Drug War Heresies" - - is misleading because our views aren't sufficiently radical to count as heresies.  The title was not intended to characterize our conclusions, but rather the questions we asked.  The American War on Drugs has been conducted like a Holy War, a battle of two competing dogmas -- a harsh, punitive campaign to eradicate drug use at seemingly any cost, and a small but increasingly influential challenge by intellectuals who too often make sweeping assertions about the benefits of legalization while ridiculing the notion that drug use might merit social stigma.  Hawks view anyone who even considers legalization as immoral and unpatriotic; doves view anyone who disputes the case for legalization as naive, timid, or a sell-out.  Our book questions both views.

BACK TO DWH HOME PAGE