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Just as drugs have shaped the course of global and U.S. history, so have periodic wars on drugs. The current U.S. drug policy regime is based on the Controlled Substances Act (1970), which classifies legal and illegal drugs onto five schedules that proceed from Schedule I (heavily restricted drugs classified as having "no medical use" such as heroin, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, or peyote) to Schedule V (less restricted drugs that have a legitimate medical use and low potential for abuse despite containing small amounts of controlled substances). This U.S. law implements the United Nations' Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs (1961), which added cannabis to former international treaties covering opiates and coca. The Psychotropic Convention (1976) added LSD and legally manufactured amphetamines and barbiturates to the list. These treaties do not control alcohol, tobacco, or nicotine. They make evident the fact that drugs with industrial backing tend to be less restricted and more available than drugs without it, such as marijuana. Drugs that cannot be transported long distances such as West African kola nuts or East African qat also tend to remain regional drugs. Many governments rely heavily on tax revenue from alcohol and cigarettes and would be hard pressed to give them up. Courtwright (2001) argues that many of the world's governing elites were concerned with taxing the traffic, not suppressing it. Modernity brought with it factors that shifted elite priorities toward control and regulation as industrialization and mechanization made the social costs of intoxication harder to absorb.

Drug regulation takes many forms depending on its basis and goals. Hence, there is disagreement among drug policy reformers about process and goals. Some seek to legalize marijuana and regulate currently illegal drugs more like currently legal drugs. Some see criminalization as the problem and advocate decriminalizing drugs. Others believe that public health measures should be aimed at preventing adverse health consequences and social harms, a position called harm reduction that gathered ground with the discovery that injection drug users were a main vector for transmitting HIV/AIDS in the United States. This alternative public health approach aims to reduce the risks associated with drug use.

Conflicts between those who advocate the status quo and those who seek to change drug policy have unfolded. Mainstream groups adhere to the idea that abstinence from drugs is the only acceptable goal. Critics contend that abstinence is an impossible dream that refuses to recognize the reality that many individuals experiment with drugs, but only a few become problematically involved with them. They offer evidence of controlled use and programs such as reality-based drug education, which is designed to teach people how to use drugs safely rather than simply avoid them. Critics argue that the "just say no" and "drug-free" schools and workplaces have proven ineffective. In arguing that the government should not prohibit consensual adult drug consumption, drug policy reformers have appealed to both liberal and conservative political ideals about drug use in democratic societies. Today's drug policy reform movement stretches across the political spectrum and has begun to gain ground among those who see evidence that the war on drugs War on Drugs has failed to curb drug use.

References:

Burnham, John, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History. New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Campbell, Nancy D., Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Courtwright, David, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

DeGrandpre, Richard, The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

DeGrandpre, Richard, Ritalin Nation: Rapid-Fire Culture and the Transformation of Human Consciousness. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

Dingelstad, David, Richard Gosden, Brain Martin, and Nickolas Vakas, "The Social Construction of Drug Debates." Social Science and Medicine 43, no. 12 (1996): 1829-1838. www. bmartin.cc/pubs/96ssm.html

Husak, Douglas, Legalize This! The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs. London: Verso, 2002.

Inciardi, James, and Karen McElrath, The American Drug Scene, 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

McTavish, Jan, Pain and Profits: The History of the Headache and Its Remedies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Musto, David, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control, 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Preble, Edward, and John J. Casey, "Taking Care of Business: The Heroin Addict's Life on the Street." International Journal of the Addictions 4, no. 1 (1969): 1-24.

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