"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."