Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-240) and index.

Six years in the making, Drug Crazy offers a gripping account of the violence, corruption, and chaos that have characterized America's drug war since its inception in 1914. Weaving a provocative analogy between the drug scene today and the failure of Prohibition in the 1920s, Drug Crazy argues that the greatest danger we face is prohibition itself. Drug Crazy takes us to the front lines of the war on drugs and introduces us to a cast of villains and heroes, profiteers and victims. Among them: Pauline Morton Sabin, a Republican aristocrat who administered a coup de grace to Prohibition by leading a million women into the arms of the Democrats; Harry Anslinger, a former railroad cop who guided the Bureau of Narcotics through five administrations and engineered some of the most enduring and pernicious myths of the drug war; and Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the Colombian kingpin who nailed a suspected informer with a bomb - killing him along with a hundred innocent airline passengers. We do, however, get a glimpse of a way out of this swamp. Lessons from Europe - and from our own experience - are pointing us toward higher ground