Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use
Tarcher, May 2003. Hardcover. Used - Very Good / Very Good. Item #290098
ISBN: 1585422274
Jacob Sullum goes beyond debate on legalization or the proper way to win the "war on drugs," to the heart of a social and individual defense of using drugs.
"Saying Yes" argues that the all-or-nothing thinking that has long dominated discussions of illegal drug use should give way to a wiser, subtler approach. Exemplified by the tradition of moderate drinking, such an approach rejects the idea that there is something inherently wrong with using chemicals to alter one's mood or mind. "Saying Yes" further contends that the conventional understanding of addiction, portraying it as a kind of chemical slavery in which the user's values and wishes do not matter, is also fundamentally misleading.
Writing in a lively and provocative style that earned him critical acclaim for his previous book, Sullum contrasts drug use as it is described by politicians and propagandists with drug use as it is experienced by the silent majority of users. The lives they lead challenge a central premise of the war on drugs: the idea that certain substances have the power to compel immoral behavior.
A nationally syndicated columnist and Reason magazine editor presents a damning portrait of how government agencies, anti-drug activists, and a naive national media have exaggerated the public fear of recreational drugs.
Used Book
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