More Timely Than Ever!

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Drug Lies

At first I was disturbed when I learned James Frey's memoir of drug use and recovery was actually fiction. But then I remembered that every premise of the misnamed war on drugs (it's a war on people) is fiction.* What's one more set of drug lies?

*The lies include: drugs are addictive; addiction is a disease; drug use per se is dangerous to oneself or society; prison can be in the interest of drug users; counseling for drug addiction is a medical process; compulsory drug rehab is therapy; drug warriors mean well; "we are winning the drug war"; ad infinitum. For more see this Reason interview with Thomas Szasz as well as his books Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers and Our Right to Drugs: The Case for the Free Market. Also see Jacob Sullum's Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.

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