For sheer governmental absurdity, the War on Drugs is hard to beat. After three decades of increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are more easily available, drug potencies are greater, drug killings are more commonplace, and drug barons are richer than ever. The War on Drugs costs taxpayers more than the Commerce, Interior, and State Departments combined - and it's the one budget item whose growth is never questioned. A strangled court system, exploding prisons, and wasted lives galore push the cost ever higher. What began as a flourish of campaign rhetoric in 1968 has grown into a monster. And while nobody claims that the War on Drugs is a success, nobody suggests an alternative, because to do so (as U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders learned) is political suicide.

How did we reach such a grim impasse? With great enthusiasm! At one time or another, the War on Drugs has been a whipping boy for many factions: parents appalled by their teens' behavior, police starved for additional revenue, conservative politicians pandering to their constituents' moral dudgeon, liberal politicians trying to act "tough," presidents seeking distractions from scandals, whites - and blacks - striving to "explain" the ghetto, TV news producers and newspaper editors enlivening the screen and Page One, spies and colonels needing an enemy to replace communism... yes, the War on Drugs has been about a lot of things, but only rarely has it been about drugs!

Author Dan Baum interviewed over 175 people - from John Ehrlichman to Janet Reno - to tell the story of how Drug War fever has escalated, who has benefited along the way, and how the mounting cost in dollars, lives, and liberties has been willfully ignored. This book takes you right into the offices where each new stage was planned and executed, and then moves to the streets where failed drug policies have resulted in bloody warfare.

This is a tale of a nation run amok - in a way that the American people are not yet ready to confront!

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