Busted: Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords and Washington's War on Drugs

Rating:
Summary: A good (but not great) buzz
Review: Editor Mike Gray has put together a diverse collection of articles in "Busted" that collectively make the argument that the war against illegal drugs has been an absolute failure. The over 33 authors who contributed to this book examine the myriad social, economic and political consequences of our current drug policies. Many of these writers present evidence contending that harm reduction would be far more effective than the punitive strategy our country has favored since Richard Nixon launched the modern drug war in 1968.

The individual articles offer information that might prove very helpful to activists fighting for commonsense policies. Indeed, the "Busted" project itself might represent a personal scrapbook of press clippings collected by Mr. Gray, who chairs just such an organization. Unfortunately, the overly loose organization of material constitutes the book's core weakness.

To begin with, Mr. Gray delivers a scant six-page Introduction for this 280-page book. Although the book is organized into seven sections that are meant to group the articles along themes such as "The View From the Fortieth Floor", we are given no guidance from Mr. Gray as to what we might expect to learn from these sections. Worse, the editor makes little attempt to contextualize these issues nor does he present any analysis of the drug law reform movement with respect to real world policy. On the plus side, Mr. Gray admirably provides a helpful Resouces section at the end of the book, but overall one suspects that this ambitious collection badly needs and deserves a better effort from its editor.

Second, the articles themselves did not always display the characteristics of "consistently high" proofreading, much less writing. Several of the stories were riddled with punctuation and spelling mistakes that make for very distracted reading; it was almost as if a few of the articles were copied from webpages and pasted into the manuscript without anyone bothering to see if the formatting might have been corrupted during the process. One hopes that these easily correctable problems will be fixed before future editions of the book are printed.

Third, the articles, while individually quite good, do tend to overlap and don't always seem to fall in the right sections of the book. For example, I almost lost count of the number of times I had to read about how a recent Washington, D.C. medical marijuana referendum was approved by the voters but subsequently rejected by the federal government. And a lengthy story about a crime-busting federal drug informant was included in the section "South of the Border" but, oddly, not in the section dedicated to "Criminal Justice." The time span of these stories does not help either; some articles date back as far as 1990, which seems odd for a book published in 2002 that is purported to represent current thinking on the subject. The net effect of all this is that it makes it difficult to read the book end-to-end without feeling disoriented; one quickly gets the sense that a logical progression to the arguments might never materialize, and in fact they do not.

Fourth, the reading experience is discontinuous due to the authors' wide variety of styles, tones and subject matter. You get parts investigative journalism, scholarly analysis, medical research, street reporting and more. One minute you might read an article laced with obscenities; the next you are contemplating the nuanced articulations of William F. Buckley, Jr. And in the Noriega interview, you are confounded by the seemingly endless series of conspiracy theory questions a paranoid Oliver Stone floats like so many trial balloons for a prospective Hollywood screenplay. Overall, the juxtaposition of all these stories is interesting, but it seems a little bizarre too.

In my view, you can get a good (but not great) buzz from this book. It has the merit of assembling a pastiche of stories for researchers or others who might not want to do a Google search on the topic, but in my view it also misses a golden opportunity to provide some badly needed analysis on the very important subject of drug prohibition.

Rating:
Summary: Mike Gray gets the country up to speed.
Review: For starters, the essay format makes for an easy read. You'll be grateful for this, because you won't like what you're reading.

The subjects covered include issues of legalization and decriminalization, mismanagement of resources (and the sorry state of drug treatment efforts), the hypocrisy of foreign drug policy and its effects on impoverished third world countries, the role of pharmaceutical companies in the ruckus, a model or two of how progressive drug policy has actually succeeded...and a whole lot more.

It all adds up to a simple theme, one which will not surprise you: America prefers to flex its muscles than to show compassion. We've seen it manifested over and over in our foreign policy, but this time you the reader are also the victim. This book pushed my interest in the matter to boundaries previously unknown.

Rating:
Summary: Very informative!
Review: Many thanks to Mike Gray and Maia Szlavitz for the AlterNet article (included on page 85) on Straight, Incorporated and similarly abusive gulags run by the John Birchers of the drug treatment industry. Thank GOD they're beginning to lose credibility and market share. I'm sure it's due, in part, to investigative reporting over the years by authors and reporters like you. I'll sleep just a little better because a few more poeple are wise to this scam. Again, thanks!