Book Reviews About Drugs And The Law
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Book Reviews About Drugs And The Law
Ceremonial Chemistry:
The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers
An excellent analysis of the institutionalized and state-sponsored persecution of drug use and the similarities between cultural and religious demands for specific mood-altering ceremonies and substances.
Ceremonial Chemistry is an important book and a cornerstone in the debate on the inevitable de-criminalization of illicit drugs or the continued illegalization of certain foods and plants.
Ceremonial Chemistry Drugs and Rights
Should you have the right to make up your own mind and make a choice for yourself, or should someone do that for you?
The first serious work to address the question argues that the war on drugs violates the rights of adults wanting to use drugs for pleasure, and that criminal laws against this use are incompatible with moral rights.
Drugs and Rights Drug War Heresies:
Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places
The authors, a psychologist and an economist, examine modern US drug policy. Both have been senior consultants with RAND Drug Policy Research Center, they have published an extensive library of information related to drugs and drug laws.
They show what other nations have done and offer recommendations about what the US might want to consider. Fairly heavy reading that might bore most readers. It would be most useful to an educated reader interested in US drug laws and possible solutions that might actually work to benefit society.
Drug War Heresies Forces of Habit:
Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
Easy to read, informative, and well researched. A general history of drugs that traces the spread of drug use and addiction from small isolated groups to the large scale business drugs have become today.
Includes the history of psychoactive substances, legal and illegal. Tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, marijuana, opiates, and other less common drugs are also discussed.
A very good view of the use of drugs and the influence they have had on society from ancient times to today.
Forces of Habit Growing the Hallucinogens:
How to Cultivate and Harvest
Legal Psychoactive Plants
A small book about various legal hallucinogens that can be grown in the home. Information describes the plant, it's habitat, and how to cultivate it in the home. The book doesn't go into common problems in cultivation (diseases, pests, etc), however.
A good starting point for those interested in the subject of legal home grown hallucinogens, but when you find something that interests you, get more information online or buy a book specific to growing that plant.
Growing the Hallucinogens Legal Highs:
A Concise Encyclopedia of
Legal Herbs & Chemicals
With Psychoactive Properties
This is a good starting point for people interested in legal psychoactive drugs. Although it was shorter than I would have liked, this book supplies most of the info you need to know for safe dosage and acquisition of legal herbs and chemicals with psychoactive properties of several dozen legal highs.
Get the book and after reading it if there are any substances you are interested in, find out more about them on the internet before ingesting anything.
Legal Highs Our Right to Drugs:
The Case for a Free Market
Interesting book written by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Explains the authors views on why all drugs should be legally available. This includes prescription medicines and black market drugs like marijuana, mescaline, opium, etc.
Drug prohibition infringes on our moral rights as well as the rights over what we put in our bodies and the drugs we may possess. The government and doctors should not be able to tell you what drug to take. They should help a person make an informed decision when deciding about taking or not taking a specific drug.
Our Right to Drugs Sense and Nonsense About Crime and Drugs:
A Policy Guide
This book is intended as a supplemental text for a variety of courses in departments of criminal justice, sociology, and political science.
Beginning with a discussion of the administration of criminal justice in the United States, the book evaluates conservative and liberal crime control proposals, gun and crimes, drug policy, the war on drugs, and the legalization of drugs.
Sense and Nonsense About Crime and Drugs Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda
Draws extensively from archeological evidence, presenting object after object engraved with symbols of shamanic travels. It deconstructs ancient myths to show that many of them alluded to visionary states produced by ingesting psychoactive plants and potions.
Traces the roots of the modern drug war back to its ancient origins. The book argues that over time, the stories told by ancient people have been corrupted, and manipulated by forces bent on producing a conformist industrial culture.
Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda The American Disease:
Origins of Narcotic Control
A book more for the student, than the average reader. This is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the U.S.
David Musto examines the relations between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War to the Reagan and Clinton administrations.
The American Disease Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed
and What We Can Do About It:
A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs
Written by a man who has worked as a federal prosecutor, a trial judge, and a California superior court justice. The author informs readers of the amount of money spent, the crime caused, and the lives ruined by the war on drugs.
Many people in government, legal, and other positions who are in favor of the war on drugs see it as an easy means of getting some of the billions of dollars wasted on it each year in the US.
Putting nonviolent offenders in prison and diverting law enforcement resources that could be used to serve and protect society as a whole might not be a very good decision.
Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed