Fog of War Volume 36, Number 3, Fall 2009 Letter from the Editor Front Section Bursting at the Seams IAN MERRIFIELD Drug incarcerations, prison overcrowding, and community corrections Escaping the Poppy Field IVANA DJAK, NEIL PATEL American anti-opium efforts in Afghanistan The Source of the Problem ANGELA PRIMBAS Confronting prescription drug abuse Decriminalization in Massachusetts … Read more
The silenced economics of legalization In 1998, the satirical newspaper The Onion boldly declared “Drugs Win Drug War.” Satire aside, the headline embodied the increasingly prevalent view that America’s War on Drugs is unwinnable, and that it has been ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Still, the dominant view in American politics is that prohibited … Read more
Confronting prescription drug abuse Prescription drug abuse is perhaps the most overlooked addiction problem in America today. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, prescription painkillers now rank as the nation’s second-most popular drug, behind marijuana. Nonetheless, prescription drug abuse does not garner nearly as much public attention as drugs like cocaine or … Read more
Cass Sunstein meets the Internet Republic.com 2.0, by Cass Sunstein, Princeton University Press, 2009. $19.95. 272 pgs. From Hamilton to Hofstadter, America’s observers have long labeled it a society reinforced by healthy debate. Harvard Law’s Cass Sunstein’s latest work, the awkwardly-titled Republic.com 2.0, offers a vision at odds with this optimistic tradition. Sunstein sees new … Read more
Turning from the coca fields to the cocaine market While anti-drug policy rarely makes headlines in American politics today, the issue dominates politics in Colombia. The South American country is a hotbed for cultivation of the coca plant, the key ingredient in cocaine production. As of 2007, the Office of National Drug Policy reported that … Read more
A look at marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts On Nov. 4, 2008, Massachusetts became the twelfth state to decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. Known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative, Proposition 2 was passed by a sweeping 65-35 margin, a more decisive showing than even Barack Obama in the famously blue … Read more
Governor Michael Dukakis on the politics and potential growth of high speed rail public transportation Former governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, is currently a Distinguished Professor of political science at Northeastern University. He is an advocate of innovations in public transportation and spoke recently with the HPR on this topic. HPR: In December, President Obama … Read more
Life after losing the Presidency Among the flurry of political maneuvering and intrigue surrounding the vacancy of Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat came the interesting proposition that a suitable placeholder might have been found in 75-year-old Michael Dukakis, a man The Boston Globe assured had “put his political ambitions behind him.” What seemed strange about this … Read more
Surveying the revival of religion God is Back, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge, Penguin Press, 2009. $27.95, 416 pgs. Our times are defined by rapid revolutions of technology and science; what room is there for religion? Predictions of faith’s demise were commonplace in the mid-20th century, but while secularism triumphed in Western Europe, for … Read more
Critics have long derided America’s “War on Drugs” as a mistaken moniker. Anti-drug policy, they argue, has no defined mission, no coordinated enemy, and no path to victory. In the Clinton administration, drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey attempted to jettison the phrase, in part because of the public’s impression that the government had lost the … Read more