Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute, has produced an extremely well written and thoroughly documented analysis of the effect of the War on Drugs and the US relationships with Latin America. The author views the US's self-destructive crusade as disastrous to its relationship with Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica, and other countries. Carpenter presents a compelling litany of the negative consequences of the US pursuit of pharmaceutical Calvinism. The damage done to the environment, the erosion of civil liberties, the corruption of the police and other government functionaries, not to mention the cost in lives and money are collectively viewed as more negative than the impact of illegal drugs themselves. Many of Carpenter's libertarian views are similar to those of Milton Friedman, William Buckley, and George Soros. The author maintains that the only realistic way out of this policy morass is to adopt some form of drug legalization. Carpenter presents a compelling work where logic and reality replace hysteria and public policy making by emotion. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. J. S. Robey University of Texas at Brownsville

Far from a sloganeering metaphor, the war on drugs is an all-too-bloody reality, argues this meticulous and impassioned indictment of U.S. drug policy. While it has eroded civil liberties at home, the author argues, the war on drugs has been a catastrophe for Latin American countries. Their governments have been pressured by the U.S. into adopting a heavy-handed and unpopular program of drug prohibition; peasants have had their crops poisoned by drug eradication programs; dozens of planes have been shot down at the behest of U.S. surveillance teams; and brutal DEA-organized drug sweeps have inspired large protests. Meanwhile, he says, the proceeds from the illicit drug trade flow into the hands of criminal syndicates and guerilla insurgents, fueling the civil war in Colombia and a plague of corruption and gang violence throughout Latin America. Meanwhile, despite all the attempts at suppression, the worldwide market for drugs has exploded and drug prices are as low as ever. Carpenter, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of The Captive Press, argues that the failure of the war on drugs is the predictable consequence of defying the law of supply and demand. Given the strong market for drugs, attempts at prohibition result in high prices and irresistible profits for farmers and smugglers willing to risk criminal sanctions. The only solution, he contends, is full legalization of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Its a provocative thesis, but Carpenters thorough research, sober argumentation and clear writing strengthen this challenge to what he sees as the reigning prohibitionist orthodoxy. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved