"Sadly
the war on drugs has offered, and continues to offer,
modern man much of what he seems to crave: fake compassion and genuine
coercion; pseudo-science and real paternalism; make-believe disease
and metaphorical treatment; opportunistic politics and unctuous
hypocrisy.
"It
is hard for me to see how anyone who knows anything about history,
about pharmacology, and about the fundamental human struggle for
self-disclipline and the seemingly equally intense human need to
reject it and replace it with submission to a coercively paternalistic
authority - how any such person could escape the conclusion that
the war on drugs is simply another chapter in the natural history
of human stupidity."
--
Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, from A Plea for the Cessation of
the Longest War in the Twentieth Century - The War on Drugs, 1988 |