Drugs, Power, and Politics

"Drugs, Power, and Politics is that rare thing: an urgently written book about a profound political and ethical crisis that appears on the scene at the precise moment when we need it most. Carl Boggs deftly navigates the warped history of American drug policy and the misbegotten war that has ravaged two generations of young Americans and shredded basic civil liberties for all of us. Boggs focuses a merciless light on this corrosive form of social control that masquerades under a banner of moral rectitude. A fierce, brave, and exacting history that is also a passionate call for peace and redemption on the home front."
-- Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of CounterPunch and coauthor of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press

"A wide-ranging historical and political treatise, Drugs, Power, and Politics explores American drug policy and its consequences from the Nixon era to the present day. Trenchant, contemporary, and astute, Boggs's book dismantles the hypocrisy surrounding drugs from early moral campaigns, media sensationalism, global economics, violent cartels, and the power and rise of huge pharmaceutical companies to the current debates about marijuana legalization. Under one cover, the reader will learn why America is stuck in a morass of misinformation, dirty politics, economic travesties, and human suffering, all the while being lied to about the pros and cons of licit and illicit ways we medicate ourselves."
-- Patricia A. Adler, University of Colorado Professor Emerita and author of Drugs and the American Dream

“Drugs, Power, and Politics is that rare thing: an urgently written book about a profound political and ethical crisis that appears on the scene at the precise moment when we need it most. Carl Boggs deftly navigates the warped history of American drug policy and the misbegotten war that has ravaged two generations of young Americans and shredded basic civil liberties for all of us. Boggs focuses a merciless light on this corrosive form of social control that masquerades under a banner of moral rectitude. A fierce, brave, and exacting history that is also a passionate call for peace and redemption on the home front.”
—Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of CounterPunch and coauthor of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press

“A wide-ranging historical and political treatise, Drugs, Power, and Politics explores American drug policy and its consequences from the Nixon era to the present day. Trenchant, contemporary, and astute, Boggs’s book dismantles the hypocrisy surrounding drugs from early moral campaigns, media sensationalism, global economics, violent cartels, and the power and rise of huge pharmaceutical companies to the current debates about marijuana legalization. Under one cover, the reader will learn why America is stuck in a morass of misinformation, dirty politics, economic travesties,
and human suffering, all the while being lied to about the pros and cons of licit and illicit ways we medicate ourselves.”
—Patricia A. Adler, University of Colorado Professor Emerita and author of Drugs and the American Dream