Drug Crazy is a scathing indictment of America's decades-long "war on drugs," an expensive and hypocritical folly which has essentially benefited only two classes of people: professional anti-drug advocates and drug lords.

Did you know that a presidential commission determined that marijuana is neither an addicitve substance nor a "stepping stone" to harder drugs ... only to have President Nixon shelve the embarrassing final report and continue the government's policy of inflated drug addiction statistics? Did you know that several medical experts agree that "cold turkey" methods of withdrawal are essentially ineffective and recommend simply prescribing drugs to addicts ... and that communities in which this has been done report lower crime rates and reduced unemployment among addicts as a result?

Whether he's writing about the American government's strong-arm tactics toward critics of its drug policy or the reduction of countries like Colombia and Mexico to anarchic killing zones by powerful cartels, Mike Gray's analysis has an immediacy and a clarity worth noting. The passage of "medical marijuana" bills in California and Arizona (where the bill passed by a nearly 2-to-1 majority) indicates that people are getting fed up with the government's Prohibition-style tactics toward drugs. Drug Crazy just might speed that process along.


From Publishers Weekly
Arguing that the federal government's $300-billion campaign to eradicate drug use over the last 15 years has been a total failure, Gray calls for legalization of drugs and government regulation of their sale, with doctors writing prescriptions to addicts. Although he scants specifics as to how this would work and the potential consequences, his outspoken brief for decriminalization is bolstered by a revealing history of drug use in America. A Hollywood screenwriter, TV producer and director, Gray brings a filmic sense of drama and action to a gritty, scorching look at the failure of America's war on drugs. As he jump-cuts from Al Capone's syndicate in Prohibition-era Chicago to the abortive Reagan/Bush campaign to control Latin American drug traffic, Gray maintains that hardcore addicts, a small minority of drug users, have served as a scapegoat for politicians and lawmakers, with the nation's "moral focus" selectively shifting from opium and morphine in the first two decades of this century, to alcohol, then to marijuana in the early 1930s, to crack cocaine today. "It would seem that if Americans are to have any say at all in what their teenagers are exposed to," he concludes, "they will have to take the drug market out of the hands of the Tijuana Cartel and Gangster Disciples, and put it back in the hands of doctors and pharmacists where it was before 1914." Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Screenwriter Gray's (The China Syndrome) main thesis is that the U.S. government should legalize narcotic drugs under the strictest control to combat the growing problem of drug use and organized crime. He bases his argument on the history of the alcohol industry under Prohibition, when the federal government attempted to ban alcohol and instead created an opportunity for organized crime to prosper. Gray traces the social history of drug and alcohol use without overburdening the reader with too much detail. Though concise, he gives the reader enough long-forgotten information to show what we can learn from past attempts to wrestle with this issue. Fully footnoted and containing a web-site bibliography, Gray's well-researched book will hold the reader's attention. His is a provocative solution to the drug problem, but don't expect America to adopt it any time soon. Recommended for all libraries.?Michael Sawyer, Northwestern Regional Lib., Elkin, NCCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Economist
This is reportage from the front line, told with all the verve of an action film...


The Wall Street Journal, Sally Satel
His book is so lopsided that it fails to persuade.... Mr. Gray's angry, anecdote-driven account is hardly the best place to look for reform.


The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Robert Sabbag
Drug Crazy ... is one of the few contributions to the recent dope literature that displays any sense of humor on the subject. That is not to say that his book is not serious, merely that Gray does not let his passion for reason subvert a felicitous and very entertaining prose style. The sanity he brings to the subject is refreshing.


From Kirkus Reviews
Dispatches from the war on drugs from author (Angle of Attack, 1992), screenwriter (The China Syndrome), and filmmaker (The Murder off Fred Hampton) Gray. His conclusion: We're losing. In ten days a mid-level ``crack'' dealer takes in $451,000. Colombian drug lords are multibillionaires. In one year, 1996, worldwide opium production increased by 20 percent. Such facts, concludes Gray, indicate that despite an 80-year battle in the US to fight drug use through prohibition, despite the US government spending $300 billion in the last 15 years alone on the war on drugs, drug production, sale, and use continue unabated. Gray further contends that this war on drugs is tearing apart the social fabric of the US. Few are the government antidrug agencies not contaminated by corruption. While the vast majority of drug users are white, those convicted of drug sale or use are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. The Constitution is regularly disregarded in the search for drug convictions. The prohibition approach to the drug problem has not worked. Prohibitionwhether of alcohol in the past or drugs today--produces just the effects it aims to prevent. Forced onto the black market, drug sales will inevitably fall into the hands of the most ruthless criminals. In the search for profit, these criminals will produce those drugs that are the most profitable and the easiest to produce. Thus when the price of cocaine goes up, crack (very cheap and highly addictive) is created. Gray argues that control, not prohibition, is the answer. Marijuana use should be controlled in much the same way alcohol is; hard-core drug addicts must be allowed treatment that includes legal access to the drugs on which they are dependent. A tightly controlled legal drug market would end illicit drug trafficking and its costs in blood and money. Gray's analysis is, of course, controversial. It is, however, argued eloquently and persuasively, and deserves a hearing.(Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Over the last fifteen years, American taxpayers have spent over $300 billion to wage the war on drugs--three times what it cost to put a man on the moon. In Drug Crazy, journalist Mike Gray offers a scathing indictment of this financial fiasco, chronicling a series of expensive and hypocritical follies that have benefited only two groups: professional anti-drug advocates and drug lords.

The facts are alarming. More than twenty-five years ago, a presidential committee determined that marijuana is neither an addictive substance nor a "stepping stone" to harder drugs, but the embarrassing final report was shelved by a government already heavily invested in "the war against drugs". Many medical experts recommend simply prescribing drugs to addicts, and communities that have done this report a lower crime rate and reduced unemployment among drug users.

In a riveting account of how we got to this impasse-- discriminatory policies, demonization of users, grandstanding among both lawmakers and lawbreakers -- conventional wisdom is turned on its head. Rather than a planned assault on the scourge of addiction, the drug war has happened almost by accident and has been continually exploited by political opportunists.

A gripping account of the violence, corruption, and chaos characterizing the drug war since its inception, Mike Gray's incisive narrative launches a frontal attack on America's drug orthodoxy. His overview of the battlefield makes it clear that this urgent debate must begin now.