Pills, Powder, and Smoke

"Many people assume that as the war on drugs has failed and because a few countries have liberated cannabis as a recreational drug as well as a medicine, the "drug problem" is solved. This new book powerfully demolishes any such complacency that might have developed in the west. Drug wars represent a major, ongoing world-wide disaster. This book is a must-read for anyone pursuing a rational policy debate about drugs."
--Dr. David Nutt, author of Drugs without the Hot Air (UIT Press), and The Neurobiology of Addiction (OUP).

"Antony Loewenstein is an amazing journalist and this is an amazing book. Anyone who cares about the war on drugs--one of the biggest catastrophes in the world--should read this superb book right away."
--Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections

"In this vivid, partisan piece of reportage, Australian journalist Loewenstein (Disaster Capitalism) depicts the catastrophic human consequences of the U.S.-led war on drugs and advocates for the legalisation of all illicit substances. Loewenstein argues that America's prohibitionist policy serves not to counter abuse or impede trafficking, but rather to create corrupt "narco states" that are complicit with the federal government's foreign policy goals...Readers inclined to take a skeptical view of the drug war...will welcome Loewenstein's advocacy."
--Publishers Weekly

"A critique of the war on drugs, which, by the author's account, is mostly a war on the poor and dispossessed...The author examines several fronts in a war fought by Western governments, especially the U.S., on harder drugs that 'are consumed nightly in such major cities as London, Sydney, New York, and Paris'...A sometimes overwrought but pressing survey calling into question a war that would seem to benefit only its combatants."
--Kirkus Reviews