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An authoritative and first-of-its-kind critical constitutional history of the war on drugs that shows how drug prohibition was shaped by constitutional law, and how constitutional law was shaped by drug prohibition.

The U.S. government's decades-long war on drugs is increasingly recognized as a moral travesty as well as a policy failure. The criminalization of substances such as marijuana and magic mushrooms offends core tenets of liberalism, from the right to self-rule to protection of privacy to freedom of religion. It contributes to mass incarceration and racial subordination. And it costs billions of dollars per year--all without advancing public health. Yet, in hundreds upon hundreds of cases, courts have allowed the war to proceed virtually unchecked. How could a set of policies so draconian, destructive, and discriminatory escape constitutional curtailment?

In The Constitution of the War on Drugs, David Pozen provides an authoritative, critical constitutional history of the drug war, casting new light on both drug prohibition and U.S. constitutional development. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, advocates argued that criminal drug bans violate the Constitution's guarantees of due process, equal protection, federalism, free speech, free exercise of religion, and humane punishment. Many scholars and jurists agreed. Pozen demonstrates the plausibility of a constitutional path not taken, one that would have led to a more compassionate approach to drug control.

Rather than restrain the drug war, the Constitution helped to legitimate and entrench it. Pozen shows how a profoundly illiberal and paternalistic policy regime was assimilated into, and came to shape, an ostensibly liberal and pluralistic constitutional order. Placing the U.S. jurisprudence in comparative context, The Constitution of the War on Drugs offers a comprehensive review of drug-rights decisions along with a roadmap to constitutional reform options available today.

The majority of Americans know that there is a drug epidemic, but only a small minority is aware that it was inflicted upon our society by the rulers of darkness, the wicked men in high places, who prefer darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.

Who these men are and how they run the largest and most profitable business in the world; what they have achieved and whether there are any effective countermeasures being taken, is the subject matter of this book.

Please do not think that the drug trade is a mere street corner business, where pushers are controlled by the Mafia. Certainly it is part of the problem, but the real promoters of this accursed business are to be found in the halls of the elite of this world, the royal families, the noble families of Europe and the best families of America, Britain and Canada. The trade reaches into the highest echelons of power and has not been eradicated, but only somewhat contained. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (USDA) and drug enforcement agencies around the world are trying to fight a forest fire with garden hoses lacking adequate water-pressure. How can this be?

The answer is that the drug trade cannot be stamped out because its directors, the rulers of darkness, the wicked people in high places, will not allow the most lucrative trade in the world, with lucrative profits requiring the bare minimum of investment capital, a virtually free product with little production cost, to be taken from them.

2022 Reprint of the 1928 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Mescaline is the principal active psychedelic agent of the peyote and San Pedro cacti, which have been used in Native American religious ceremonies for thousands of years. A German pharmacologist, Arthur Heffter, isolated the alkaloids in the peyote cactus in 1897. This included mescaline, which he showed through a combination of animal and self-experiments was the compound responsible for the psychoactive properties of the plant. In 1919, Ernst Späth, another German chemist, synthesised the drug. Although personal accounts of taking the cactus had been written by psychologists such as Weir Mitchell in the US and Havelock Ellis in the UK during the 1890s, the German-American Heinrich Kluver was the first to systematically study its psychological effects in this small book called Mescal and published in 1928. The book stated that the drug could be used to research the unconscious mind.

With full legalization seeming inevitable, it's time to shift the conversation--from whether recreational cannabis should be legalized to how.

Weed Rules argues that it's time for states to abandon their grudging tolerance approach to legal weed and to embrace careful exuberance. In this thorough and witty book, law professor Jay Wexler invites policy makers to responsibly embrace the enormous benefits of cannabis, including the joy and euphoria it brings to those who use it.

The grudging tolerance approach has led to restrictions that are too strict in some cases--limiting how and where cannabis can be used, cultivated, marketed, and sold--and far too loose in others, allowing employers and police to discriminate against users. This book shows how focusing on joy and community can lead us to an equitable marijuana policy in which minority communities, most harmed by the war on drugs, play a leading role in the industry. Centering pleasure and fun as legitimate policy goals, Weed Rules puts forth specific policies to advocate for a more just, sensible, and joyous post-legalization society.

A revealing look at the history and legacy of the War on Drugs

Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, the United States government has spent over a trillion dollars fighting a losing battle. In recent years, about 1.5 million people have been arrested annually on drug charges--most of them involving cannabis--and nearly 500,000 Americans are currently incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, as a response to the dire human and financial costs, Americans are fast losing their faith that a War on Drugs is fair, moral, or effective.

In a rare multi-faceted overview of the underground drug market, featuring historical and ethnographic accounts of illegal drug production, distribution, and sales, The War on Drugs: A History examines how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy. At the same time, the collection explores how aggressive anti-drug policies produced a deviant form of globalization that offered economically marginalized people an economic life-line as players in a remunerative transnational supply and distribution network of illicit drugs. While several essays demonstrate how government enforcement of drug laws disproportionately punished marginalized suppliers and users, other essays assess how anti-drug warriors denigrated science and medical expertise by encouraging moral panics that contributed to the blanket criminalization of certain drugs.

By analyzing the key issues, debates, events, and actors surrounding the War on Drugs, this timely and impressive volume provides a deeper understanding of the role these policies have played in making our current political landscape and how we can find the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime.

This book is a guide to manufacturing methamphetamine, so that you the reader will understand the manufacturing processes and the signs of evidence in the manufacture of methamphetamine. So that you can report these signs of methamphetamine manufacturing to the proper authorities. This is not an instruction manual for methamphetamine manufacture! This book also explains the risks and penalties of methamphetamine, as well the pharmaceutical production of methamphetamine as Adderall, given to our children. As a challenge to America's dependency on using drugs, both legally and illegally, to solve its problems.

The common law began as England's national system of adjudication for correcting wrongs, protecting rights, and enforcing due administration of government in the Royal courts. Its origins can be traced back to 11th century England, and was soon exported to the rest of Britain and ultimately to the far-flung reaches of the British Empire. The common law has therefore enjoyed nearly a thousand years of development and elaboration, in many lands, influenced by but separate from the systems of continental Europe, with its own distinctive procedures of pleading, fact-finding, and remedies. It developed laws that govern much of today's world of trade, business, and finance; it defended ideas of personal liberty and equality before the law; and it helped establish principles of constitutional, legally-limited government, and administration. Thus the common law provides an original and crucial strand in the history of social organization, politics, and culture around the world.

In this Very Short Introduction Joseph Getzler explains the evolution of the common law. The main institutions of the common law are described - courts, procedures, judges and juries, and means of reporting, analysing, and learning the law; and the main categories of common-law rights and duties are delineated - property, contract, and tort, equitable claims, unjust enrichment, crime, constitutional and public law, and civil liberties.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Clandestine labs that manufacture drugs or explosives may be encountered virtually anywhere. They can range from complex operations employing scientific equipment and exotic chemicals or simply kitchen utensils and chemicals purchased at a local grocery or hardware store. Regardless of their form, the key to detecting clandestine labs is the ability to recognize the combinations of equipment and chemicals that constitute the lab in the first place. The first line of defense against the manufacturers--who supply the drug trade and terrorists with their tools of destruction--is law enforcement, the fire services, and other emergency responders.

Field Guide to Clandestine Laboratory Identification and Investigation, Second Edition provides the information necessary to recognize operations that produce these deadly brews. As with the prior edition, the book has sections covering the chemicals and equipment commonly used in the manufacture of drugs and explosives. They are grouped in a manner that allows the emergency responder to quickly identify common combinations of equipment and chemicals that could potentially be used to manufacture drugs or explosives. Since many clandestine manufacturing operations use commonly available materials that have legitimate uses, the author outlines how to quickly assess and recognize key indicators associated with clandestine laboratory operations.

Sections within the book address information concerning both the hazards associated with those chemicals involved and the personal protective equipment needed to abate the hazards. In addition, documentation requirements, field-testing, and sampling procedures are detailed for use once the operation has been seized and secured. Reproducible worksheets are provided to be used either as, or to supplement, the on-scene investigators' field notes and assist in providing a standardized manner to objectively record information about the crime scene.

The ability to identify the tools used to manufacture contraband drugs and explosives is a key element in the battle against drug abuse and terrorism, making the Field Guide to Clandestine Laboratory Identification and Investigation, Second Edition an indispensible resource for responders and investigators alike.

A Potent Moment assesses the current state of cannabis laws in the United States in the context of broader discussions about drug policy and advances a framework for future efforts to use cannabis legalization to advance social equity. It describes the racist origins of cannabis criminalization and the ways in which the prosecutors of the War on Drugs have disproportionately harmed people of color. It also offers numerous detailed case studies to identify both the successes and failures of the more recent movement to legalize cannabis at the state level, particularly in terms of their efficacy at using cannabis policy to redress social inequality. At the same time, the author considers the difficulty of crafting effective policies in the face of ongoing cannabis criminalization at the federal level, a theme which is present throughout the book as well as in a chapter dedicated to weighing the benefits--but also real dangers--of various proposals for national legalization. A Potent Moment ends with a forceful call to reorient American drug policy away from fear, stigma, and punishment and toward evidence-driven approaches that are applied with compassion.

Explore the contentious and multifaceted issue of drug decriminalization and legalization from a variety of perspectives.

Part of the Health and Medical Issues Today series, this book explores the contentious issue of decriminalizing and legalizing drugs through an accessible three-part structure. Part I provides readers with the background information they need to better understand and develop informed opinions about the topic. Chapters address the difference between decriminalization and legalization, explore the biochemistry of addiction, examine historical and contemporary decriminalization and legalization movements in the USA, and highlight international examples of decriminalization and legalization efforts. Part II delves into specific issues and controversies related to this subject, including physical and mental health consequences, the impact on crime and the criminal justice system, and the potential economic and social effects at both a local and national level. Coverage is balanced and unbiased, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Part III features five engaging case studies that help the subject come to life for readers and illustrate concepts and issues discussed in the text. A glossary and annotated directory of resources round out the volume.

With full legalization seeming inevitable, it's time to shift the conversation--from whether recreational cannabis should be legalized to how.

Weed Rules argues that it's time for states to abandon their grudging tolerance approach to legal weed and to embrace careful exuberance. In this thorough and witty book, law professor Jay Wexler invites policy makers to responsibly embrace the enormous benefits of cannabis, including the joy and euphoria it brings to those who use it.

The grudging tolerance approach has led to restrictions that are too strict in some cases--limiting how and where cannabis can be used, cultivated, marketed, and sold--and far too loose in others, allowing employers and police to discriminate against users. This book shows how focusing on joy and community can lead us to an equitable marijuana policy in which minority communities, most harmed by the war on drugs, play a leading role in the industry. Centering pleasure and fun as legitimate policy goals, Weed Rules puts forth specific policies to advocate for a more just, sensible, and joyous post-legalization society.

Mexican Drug Groups in Chicago is the true account of cocaine trafficking and money laundering activities conducted by cartels in Chicago.

The story begins with an explanation of how cartels establish insulated groups to move cocaine and money, explores the difficulties that law enforcement encounters when trying to penetrate those groups, and provides a chronological account of wiretap investigations into two different Mexican cartels; one based in the state of Durango and the other in the state of Michoacan. Every million-dollar money seizure, every seizure of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, and every setback to law enforcement is described throughout the narratives of both investigations.

Mexican Drug Groups in Chicago provides a rare glimpse into the staggering amounts of cocaine and drug money that flow through Chicago.

Arlin Junior Troutt's adventures in Central and South America and the time he spent in federal prison represent a rare version of the truth. His dedication to the pursuit of happiness and freedom took him down very dark corridors toward blindingly bright revelations with unique, provocative perspectives. Everyday of his life was an adventure that will capture your interest and heart. This story of a country boy with a knack for playing the guitar is an interesting and unique voyage from the last century to today's America.

The art, music and story behind Junior's Outlaw Tales will take you on a journey that will fascinate, illuminate, infuriate and ultimately reward your effort.

Cannabis Criminology explores the prohibition, decriminalization, and liberalization of cannabis policy through the lens of criminological and sociological theory, essential concepts, and cannabis research. It does so by focusing on five thematic areas: law, society, and social control; police and policing; race, ethnicity, and criminalization; the economics of cannabis; and cannabis use and crime. It is the first book on cannabis since President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022 to pardon citizens and lawful permanent residents convicted of simple cannabis possession under federal law and DC statute. Cannabis is now legal in some form in 37 US states. To understand the reform of cannabis policy and the challenges to come, we first need to understand the connections between cannabis and criminology.

The book links key areas in past and contemporary cannabis research to criminological and sociological theories, including key concepts, emergent concerns, and new directions. Based on an up-to-date review of this growing area of research, the book outlines a research program based on five essential thematic areas. Introducing cannabis as a critical case study in moral-legal re-negotiation, it outlines how cannabis prohibition has influenced cannabis around the world. Five discrete chapters focus on thematic areas, criminological and sociological theories, define essential concepts, and provide research focused on law, society, and social control (Chapter 2), police and policing cannabis (Chapter 3), race, ethnicity, and criminalization (Chapter 4), the economics of cannabis (Chapter 5), and cannabis and crime (Chapter 6). The book concludes by presenting new ways to engage prohibitionist thinking, by challenging myths, embracing social media, and developing a duty of care to guide future cannabis researchers and explicitly involve people who use cannabis.

Cannabis Criminology will be of interest to a variety of readers, including students and scholars from a range of backgrounds studying drug use, drug policy, cannabis legalization, and other drug-related issues. It will also appeal to policymakers who want to know more about cannabis legalization and drug prohibition, those working in the criminal justice system, and social work professionals. Due to its accessible style, people involved in the cannabis industry, as well as cannabis users may also find the book interesting.

A revealing look at the history and legacy of the War on Drugs

Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, the United States government has spent over a trillion dollars fighting a losing battle. In recent years, about 1.5 million people have been arrested annually on drug charges--most of them involving cannabis--and nearly 500,000 Americans are currently incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, as a response to the dire human and financial costs, Americans are fast losing their faith that a War on Drugs is fair, moral, or effective.

In a rare multi-faceted overview of the underground drug market, featuring historical and ethnographic accounts of illegal drug production, distribution, and sales, The War on Drugs: A History examines how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy. At the same time, the collection explores how aggressive anti-drug policies produced a deviant form of globalization that offered economically marginalized people an economic life-line as players in a remunerative transnational supply and distribution network of illicit drugs. While several essays demonstrate how government enforcement of drug laws disproportionately punished marginalized suppliers and users, other essays assess how anti-drug warriors denigrated science and medical expertise by encouraging moral panics that contributed to the blanket criminalization of certain drugs.

By analyzing the key issues, debates, events, and actors surrounding the War on Drugs, this timely and impressive volume provides a deeper understanding of the role these policies have played in making our current political landscape and how we can find the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime.

La majorité des Américains savent qu'il existe une épidémie de drogue, mais seule une petite minorité est consciente qu'elle a été infligée à notre société par les chefs des ténèbres, les méchants en haut lieu, qui préfèrent les ténèbres à la lumière parce que leurs actions sont mauvaises. Ce livre traite de l'identité de ces hommes et de la manière dont ils dirigent l'entreprise la plus importante et la plus rentable du monde, de ce qu'ils ont accompli et de l'efficacité des contre-mesures prises.

N'allez pas croire que le commerce de la drogue est un simple commerce de rue, où les revendeurs sont contrôlés par la mafia. C'est certainement une partie du problème, mais les véritables promoteurs de ce commerce maudit se trouvent dans les couloirs de l'élite de ce monde, les familles royales, les familles nobles d'Europe et les meilleures familles d'Amérique, de Grande-Bretagne et du Canada. Le commerce atteint les échelons les plus élevés du pouvoir et n'a pas été éradiqué, mais seulement quelque peu contenu. L'agence américaine de lutte contre la drogue (USDA) et les agences de lutte contre la drogue du monde entier tentent de combattre un incendie de forêt avec des tuyaux d'arrosage sans pression d'eau suffisante. Comment cela est-il possible ?

La réponse est que le commerce de la drogue ne peut pas être éradiqué parce que ses directeurs, les dirigeants des ténèbres, les méchants en haut lieu, ne permettront pas que le commerce le plus lucratif du monde, avec des profits colossaux ne nécessitant qu'un minimum de capital d'investissement, un produit pratiquement gratuit avec peu de coûts de production, leur soit enlevé.

David Nutt regularly hit the headlines as the UK's forthright Drugs Czar (Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs), not least when fired by the Home Secretary in 2009 for his 'inconvenient' views. In Nutt Uncut he explains how he survived ill-judged political and media vilification to establish the respected charity Drug Science, with the aim of telling the truth about drugs.

The book describes his life, distinguished career and scientific achievements, including his research into the human brain and the effects that both lawful and criminally illegal substances (including psychedelics) have on the brain and behaviour. It also catalogues with expert precision the risks of harm to drug users and others of a range of well-known drugs.

Surveying the state of medical knowledge around various currently prohibited substances - from hard drugs to LSD, cannabis, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and poppers - Professor Nutt ranks their potential harms and benefits (e.g. in treating anxiety, depression or pain) leading him to challenge the distorted logic of a blanket ban on anything psychoactive except alcohol, tobacco and caffeine.

Nutt Uncut contains far, far more about the usually hidden world of drugs, their use, abuse and role as a political bargaining counter - making it of interest not just to the many experts and others who already support the author's campaign for a frank, evidence-based approach to drugs but also anyone who wishes to learn about what he describes in Chapter 11 as 'policy madness.'

Heroin is an illustrated history of Canadian heroin regulation over two centuries. Susan Boyd points to our failure to address the overdose death epidemic caused by criminalizing drug users and to the decades of resistance to harm-reduction policies. Heroin, discovered in 1898, was heralded as an important medicine and successfully marketed as a pain reliever and cough suppressant. Until the early 1950s, heroin was prescribed for therapeutic use in Canada. Yet, illegal heroin use became the focus of drug prohibition advocates and law enforcement, who painted it as highly addictive and destructive. Systemic racism was the impetus for our first anti-heroin laws; the race, gender and class of users influenced drug control, which, by the 1930s, became the focus of law enforcement. Flawed ideas about heroin and people who use the drug have shaped drug law and policy for decades. This book is informed by documentary evidence and the experiences of people who use/used heroin, drug user unions and harm-reduction advocates. These sources highlight the structural violence of drug policy that uses prohibition and criminalization as the main response to drug use.

As cannabis legalization reforms are underway, there is some concern that non-profit, 'middle ground' options may remain under-researched and thus less visible. This book offers an in-depth account of one of the possible 'middle ground' models for the supply of cannabis: the Cannabis Social Club.

Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCs) are typically formal, non-profit associations of adult cannabis users who produce and distribute that substance close to or at cost price among themselves. They constitute an user-driven model for the supply of cannabis. In most jurisdictions, CSCs remain a grass roots, unregulated initiative of groups of users, but the model has been legalized in Uruguay and Malta, and it has featured recent debates and legislative proposals in other countries. This book brings together contributions from internationally respected scholars, drawing on case studies, empirical findings and policy reflections, from a range of countries (such as Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Uruguay, USA), and a consideration of the CSC model from different disciplinary backgrounds. Part one provides detailed analysis of where and how CSCs have been operating, and a critical analysis of their key features and relationship with institutional actors. Part two discusses several policy outcomes and proposes a design of a regulatory market, as well as considering whether the CSC model might be suited for adaptation to the supply of other substances.

The Cannabis Social Club is important reading for academics in the fields of drug policy analysis, criminology, economics, policy studies and anthropology. It will also be of interest to policy makers, journalists, law-enforcement personnel.

Inside a drug war so screwy that people don't know what's illegal--until it's too late.

Bizarro is a page-turning tale of the unprecedented prosecution of Burton Ritchie and Ben Galecki, the Florida-based founders of a sprawling spice (synthetic cannabinoid) operation. With this book, journalist and former New York City narcotics prosecutor Jordan S. Rubin exposes a Reagan-era law called the Analogue Act, which targets dealers selling drugs that are substantially similar to controlled substances--an unwieldy law that produces erratic results in court.

Rubin brings readers deep inside the synthetic war, exploring how Ritchie and Galecki landed in its crosshairs and why one of the DEA's own chemists may have been their best chance at freedom, until he was arrested too. This stranger-than-fiction narrative is backed by thousands of pages of court records and exclusive interviews with defendants, lawyers, law enforcement, celebrities, and more. Bizarro reveals the world of underground chemists making drugs faster than the government can ban them, dealers making millions in a gray market, and a justice system run amok.