Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance With Illegal Drugs

Rating:
Summary: Drug Policy 101
Review: It's frightening to consider that most of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for establishing illegal drug policy in America will have never read Jill Jonnes' book. Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams should be mandatory reading for all such people, not necessarily because of the conclusions she reaches--there tends to be dispute in these--but because of the incredible wealth of historical information she has packed in it.

One surprise for the average reader of Hep-Cats is the rich history of illicit drug use in America. Drug use connotes Timothy Leary and the turbulent sixties, or the more recent crack cocaine epidemic. But in reality, numerous waves of drug abuse-illegal and otherwise--have swept the country, each with their own unique origins, consequences, and solutions. One of the benefits of studying history, is the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and avoid repeating them. It appears that America has been repeating its errors in using and controlling drugs for centuries. We're a liberal, open-minded society of fun-loving risk-takers. We delude ourselves into believing the latest and greatest drug has no consequences, or that we're at least of strong enough character to master it. The inevitable result is the vicious cycle of addiction (or dependency), crime, finger pointing, and policy experimentation.

Does the answer lie in prevention, treatment, education, law enforcement, stricter sentencing, or all of the above? We don't always agree, but Hep-Cats provides a thorough and accurate background, a wonderful educational foundation on which policymakers could base decisions and hopefully control arguably the single largest contributor to crime in America: drug abuse. But this is no textbook. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully constructed, and very well-written, Hep-Cats is an entertaining read for all. -Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Rating:
Summary: biased historical perspective
Review: Jonnes does a good job of chronicling America's history with drugs and drug use. She provides great detail in where drugs were and how they got there. However, her approached is biased and clouded by anti-drug inferences and conclusions throughout. After reading the second page, I knew exactly where her argument was headed. This might be fine for an opinion piece, but she presents this work as historical. It clearly is much more than that.
Jonnes also focuses on opiates as the standard for drug use, giving only passing references to marijuana, yet concluding that marijuana falls into the same category amid considerations of legalization or decriminalization. She makes some erroneous claims, like her implications that once you try opiates you'll be hooked soon after, very much a reefer-madness approach. She only casually alludes to Anslinger's corruption. She also only uses those studies that support her position, completely ignoring studies that have at least equal, and sometimes more, scientific soundness and validity. She never even mentions the government studies by Laguardia in 1944, or Schaffer in 1972, for example. But had she done that, it would have conflicted with her completely biased view. She even goes so far as to imply that Nixon eased drug penalties and presents him as a common-sensical figure in this, completely ignoring his demand that marijuana be classified as a schedule 1 narcotic, which it isn't (it's not even a narcotic, and it certainly doesn't fit the critera of schedule 1).
Unfortunately, this book is like much of anti-drug works - political in nature and deceptive in detail.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but somewhat preachy
Review: Jonnes randomly mixes a wealth of facts with a large body of rumor and innuendo without ever asking how to separate the two. I was particularly struck by her suggestion that cocaine-induced rampages by African American men in the South led to one police department's decision to upgrade their weapons, with a citation to Musto's more accurate history in the endnote. Musto notes that fear of cocaine was generated and sustained by wild rumors, racism, and reports of coked-up minorities raping white women and able to withstand .32 caliber bullets, leading one force to actually switch to .38s in order to effectively kill black drug users.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but somewhat preachy
Review: This book is a great read if you want to know about the interesting history of drugs in the United States. However, Ms. Jonnes provides "answers" at the end of her book that are not consistent with the material she previously exposed. For example, she says that one solution is to stigmatize drugs; yet in the sixties the older generation was wholly antidrug and that did not stop the counterculture from using them. She also does not seem to want to acknowledge that alcohol use is another important part of the drug epidemic (even if it is now legal, remember Prohibition days), indeed, most people start with alcohol as a pathway to illegal drugs, not with marijuana. Also, she wholly refuses to accept that there could actually be people who use illegal drugs in a recreational way and that this does not affect their lives, work or relationships, something I find disturbing because in reality this is quite common. So, all in all, read this book for its greatly researched and detailed history but form your own opinion about the current situation and how it should be handled.