Drug War Crimes

“Professor Miron has made a highly significant improvement to the canon of drug war literature and his book can well be used as the standard for judging all else in the field. He approaches the subject with scholarly precision and treats all arguments, pro and con, with integrity and clear perception. Drug War Crimes avoids all the hyperbole of zealots willing to dispense with truth, objectivity and reason for the sake of their predetermined positions. A reasonable mind will find this book exceedingly valuable. It is a totally honest book that has been needed for a very long time.”
—John L. Kane, Jr., Senior Judge, U. S. District Court

“Miron’s arguments are lucid, well-reasoned, and powerful. Everyone can benefit from reading this important, insightful work.”
—Margaret M. Russell, former Vice President, ACLU; Professor of Law, Santa Clara University

“In Drug War Crimes, Jeffrey Miron has written a thoughtful analysis that questions the basis for the official war on drugs. He uses current evidence and historical precedent to support legalization by showing that prohibition only makes a slight dent in drug use. Instead, as Miron persuasively demonstrates, the net effects of prohibition, both past and present, are to increase violence, enrich criminals, threaten civil liberties, and make drug users more ill. The right question for policy makers, he concludes, is not whether drugs are misused but whether the benefits of prohibition outweigh its exorbitant costs. All in all, this is a solidly researched and dispassionate discussion of a topic that is too often couched in moral and emotional terms.”
—Hubert Williams, President, Police Foundation; former Chief of Police, Newark, NJ

“The case for drug legalization has been made before, but Jeffrey Miron strengthens and enriches the case with his analyses of data from the prohibition era and from other countries that strongly corroborate the common sense conclusion that drug prohibition causes far more crime, disease and death than would legalization, or even a retrenchment of the irrational drug war we have been mired in for nearly a century.”
—Steven B. Duke, Professor of Law, Yale University