The New War on Drugs: Symbolic Politics and Criminal Justice Policy.

eds. Eric L. Jensen and Jurg Gerber, ACJS/Anderson, 1-800-582-7295, 1998, 256 pp.

The New War on Drugs: Symbolic Politics and Criminal Justice Policy is an anthology composed of 12 chapters by 18 different authors, yet it is a remarkably well-integrated text, leading to a clear and concise concluding chapter that ably sums up the overall themes. It is clear that the editors, who also wrote the first and last chapters, worked closely with the authors to produce a coherent statement of what they call the "left realist criminology" perspective on the drug problem.

The left realist criminology perspective traces the U.S. drug problem to misguided social policies of criminalizing drug use based on ethnic and social class conflicts, cynical exaggeration of the problem by the media and turf expansion by various governmental agencies. Furthermore, manipulation of public opinion for political gain has locked the country into a war on drugs that has succeeded only in making things worse.

Specific issues that are dealt with include U.S. foreign policy; the criminalization of the drug addiction of pregnant, lower-class blacks; and emphasis on the crack cocaine trade - ostensibly because it is the drug of choice of low-income African Americans. One might assume this "social constructionist" approach would call for an outright end to the criminalization of drug use. Instead, however, the authors advocate a "harm reduction" model, with such components as increased methadone availability, discretionary acceptance of most marijuana use, increased availability of treatment programs and needle exchanges to promote safe drug use. It would perhaps be unfair to expect the authors to spell out their harm reduction model in detail. They do state the underlying public health philosophy quite well: drugs are seen as potentially harmful to some users, but "the adverse health consequences of drug use have been overstated."

The book does not profess to give a balanced presentation of the arguments about drug control policy. It simply makes the strongest possible case for viewing the present policy as the outgrowth of racist, classist and other ignoble motives. Also, the logical conclusion of the authors' analysis of the drug problem would seem to call for the legalization of drug use. The authors, however, conclude that such an agenda is not feasible now - partly for political reasons and partly because some transition stage is socially required.

But, no matter what the historical origins of U.S. policy, the real issue is the current impact of drugs, and what the effect would be of the de facto decriminalization that the harm reduction model calls for. While I believe that a reasonable case can be (and has been) made for such decriminalization, I do not think that the relative harmlessness of drugs is quite as evident as The New War on Drugs makes it out to be.

The New War on Drugs is an important addition to the social policy debate concerning drug use. Taken by itself, it may seem to be too much of a one-sided "far left" viewpoint. However, it presumes reasonable familiarity with the policy debate and sets out to document its position with numerous citations of the historical record and current research. Readers unfamiliar with symbolic interactionism and "constructionist" sociology may be put off by some of the jargon. I recommend beginning with the last chapter; as is true in many academic texts, this chapter gives the clearest overall statement of the authors' basis for arguing that we should substitute a harm reduction model for our current war on drug use.

Reviewed by Robert J. Homant, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Detroit Mercy.