The War on Drugs is now a century old. The question isn't why aren't we winning, it's why are we fighting?
In 1938, Dr. Henry Smith Williams saw the effects of decades of drug laws enacted between 1909 and 1924 that banned the importation and use of opium, cocaine, and marijuana and criminalized drug users to find out who benefited. No surprise, it wasn't the American public who were convinced by complicit newspapers that removing drugs and immigrants would eradicate crime but the pharmaceutical industry and law enforcement.
Dr. Williams' research and observations have proven true to a scale he could never have imagined.
Conservative cultural warriors in the early 1900s found a singular cause of every societal wrong: DRUGS. Especially when black, brown, and poor people use drugs. Harry Anslinger, who led the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-1962, escalated the War in the wake of alcohol prohibition. Anslinger focused on marijuana, ignored the science of the day, and proclaimed it a scourge upon America. Drug laws enforced by newly empowered police at the height of Jim Crow legislation, eugenic 'science,' and rampant xenophobia created governmental policies that remain in place to this day.
Dr. Williams shows that the solution is treatment, not criminalization. But more importantly, he demonstrates the War on Drugs' sinister origins that are hauntingly familiar to anyone who's experienced friends and family dealing with the aftermath of the Purdue Pharma Oxycontin tragedy.
Feral House editor Christina Ward provides a brief updated history of the War on Drugs since 1938 and a biographical sketch of author Dr. Henry Williams, a flawed yet vigorous patient advocate. Contains reproductions of original illustrations by the author's brother and fellow physician, Dr. Walter Huntington Williams.
