In the United States today, the use or possession of many drugs is a criminal offense. Can these criminal laws be justified? What are the best reasons to punish or not to punish drug users? These are the fundamental issues debated in this book by two prominent philosophers of law. Douglas Husak argues in favor of drug decriminalization, by clarifying the meaning of crucial terms, such as legalize, decriminalize, and drugs; and by identifying the standards by which alternative drug policies should be assessed. He critically examines the reasons typically offered in favor of our current approach and explains why decriminalization is preferable. Peter de Marneffe argues against drug legalization, demonstrating why drug prohibition, especially the prohibition of heroin, is necessary to protect young people from self-destructive drug use. If the empirical assumptions of this argument are sound, he reasons, drug prohibition is perfectly compatible with our rights to liberty.

Explodes many of the myths that surround drug use.

The question is no longer if we should end the war on drugs but how we do it. This No-Nonsense Guide counts the human and financial cost of fifty years of drug war - and proceeds to outline a better way, looking at where drug law reform is already working, how to overcome the obstacles to reform, and what a post-drug war world might look like.

Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know(R) provides readers with a non-partisan primer covering everything from the risks and benefits of using marijuana to what is happening with marijuana laws around the world. This book serves as the price of admission for any serious discussion about marijuana legalization.

This completely revised and updated secong edition of the Drug Legalization Debate continues to address, and offer alternatives to, the major issues.

Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the world. Over the past couple of decades, several Western jurisdictions have seen reforms in, or changes to, the way cannabis use is being controlled, departing from traditional approaches of criminal prohibition that have dominated cannabis use control regimes for most of the twentieth century. While reform is stalled at the international level, the last decade has seen an acceleration of legislative and regulatory reforms at the local and national levels, with countries no longer willing to bear the human and financial costs of prohibitive policies. Furthermore, legalization models have been implemented in US states, Canada and Uruguay, and are being debated in a number of other countries. These models are providing the world with unique pilot programs from which to study and learn. This book assembles an international who’s who of cannabis scholars who bring together the best available evidence and expertise to address questions such as: How should we evaluate the models of cannabis legalization as they have been implemented in several jurisdictions in the past few years? Which scenarios for future cannabis legalization have been developed elsewhere, and how similar/different are they from the models already implemented? What lessons from the successes and failures experienced with the regulation of other psychoactive substances (such as alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and “legal highs”) can be translated to the effective regulation of cannabis markets? Legalizing Cannabis will appeal to anyone interested in public health policies and drug policy reform and offers relevant insights for stakeholders in any other country where academic, societal or political evaluations of current cannabis policies (and even broader: current drug policies) are a subject of debate.

For the last 50 years, drug prohibition laws have put the market for illegal drugs into the hands of organised criminals. Now, it’s time to take control. Ending the failed war on drugs will reduce drug-related violence, tackle organised crime, end the needless criminalisation of millions, and will halt the drain on government funds and resources. In this book, global opinion-leaders on the frontline of the drug debate describe their experiences and perspectives on what needs to be done. Highlighting the pitfalls behind drug policy to-date and bringing to light new policies and approaches, which make a clear case for galvanizing governments to end the war on drugs – once and for all.