DRCNet is pleased to inform you of the imminent publication of "DRUG CRAZY: HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS AND HOW WE CAN GET OUT". Drug Crazy has been published by Random House, and should be in your local bookstore any week now. Drug Crazy was written by DRCNet advisor Mike Gray, a well known author whose credits include the screenplay from the hit movie "The China Syndrome", as well as the award-winning documentaries "American Revolution II" and "The Murder of Fred Hampton". The staff of DRCNet all feel that Drug Crazy is one of the best, most exciting, readable, action-packed books about the drug war and the need for reform ever written. Adding to our excitement is the fact that DRCNet is lauded and prominently featured in the book's appendix, followed by an extensive Internet directory to the movement and other drug policy resources.

If Drug Crazy goes big, it will do a lot for the issue, DRCNet, and the movement as a whole. We are writing to ask you to take a moment today or tomorrow to make one or a few brief phone calls to help make that happen. Please call your local Border's, Barnes & Noble, Crown, independent and other bookstores, ask them if they have Drug Crazy from Random House, and say thank you. It's that simple -- you don't even have to order the book (though you may as well, because it's worth it).

Your inquiries will help make the stores and the publisher take note, ensuring that Drug Crazy gets prominently displayed in bookstores when Mike embarks on his nationwide book tour this June. With medical marijuana initiatives coming up in several states, and the Republicans promising to make drugs a major campaign issue, the timing couldn't be better. Help us break the information blackout and turn the tide against the drug war this year.

David Borden
Executive Director

Adam J. Smith
Associate Director

Following are the endorsements and book jacket text:

"This is an insightful book about the discriminatory nature of the drug war in America and how our politicians have converted a chronic medical problem into a criminal justice problem. It also explains how the increase in petty drug busts has been used to make politicians look tough on crime, build jail cells and deny funding for drug prevention and education programs for children."

Dr. Joycelyn Elders
Former U.S. Surgeon General

"Never did I think one could learn so much about the drug crisis all in one place. Mike Gray has written a book of profound compassion that nevertheless deals intelligently with the facts. Drug Crazy is an antidote for passivity."

Daniel Schorr

"This book sheds real light on what is happening in American cities today and how current drug control strategies undermine our efforts to keep our kids and streets safe. Anyone who is serious about finding solutions to drug- related problems should read this book, debate it with their colleagues and demand real solutions from their elected leaders."

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke
City of Baltimore

"This book tells the public what many front line police officers know from their experience - the drug war needs radical re-evaluation."

Joseph McNamara The Hoover Institution
Former Police Chief, San Jose, Califonia

"This urgent issue badly needs the exposure given in this book - a chilling array of facts which hopefully will move the country."

Henry Kendall, Nobel Laureate
Chairman, Union of Concerned Scientists

"I learned an enormous amount about the underside of drug politics from reading Drug Crazy. It is an eye-opener. The book raises controversial but reasoned suggestions for rethinking drug policy in the United States. I highly recommend this book to everyone concerned about developing an effective strategy toward drug abuse."

Alvin F. Poussaint, MD
Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Six years in the making, Drug Crazy offers a gripping account of the stunning 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 alcohol Prohibition in the 1920's, Drug Crazy argues that the greatest danger we face is prohibition itself.

While the target of our nation's controlled substance laws may have shifted from hooch to heroin, the impact on society - discriminatory policing, demonization of the users, graft and grandstanding among law makers and law breakers - is an instant replay. Instead of Al Capone, we have Larry Hoover of Chicago's Gangster Disciples running a multi-million dollar drug syndicate out of his prison cell in Joliet.

In a riveting account of how we got here, conventional wisdom is turned on its head and we find that, rather than a planned assault on the scourge of addiction, the drug war happened almost by accident, like a trunk tumbling downstairs, kicked along by political opportunists.

From the explosive opening montage of undercover cops caught in a shoot-out on Chicago's south side to a humid courtroom in Malaysia where a young American faces death by hanging for possession of marijuana, 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 the 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.

Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the Colombian kingpin who nailed a suspected informer with a bomb-killing him along with a hundred innocent airline passengers.

From the men and women in the forward trenches, Drug Crazy brings back a grim report: the situation is deteriorating on all fronts. In a sobering tally of the cost in crime, human suffering, and cold, hard cash, it documents the failure of crop eradication in the source countries, the hopeless task of sealing the border, and the violent world of the major players. We see the steady erosion of the Bill of Rights and a grinding criminal justice mill so overwhelmed it's running a night shift.

We also get a glimpse of a way out of this swamp. Lessons from Europe-and from our own experience-are pointing us toward higher ground.

In Drug Crazy, Mike Gray has launched a frontal assault on America's drug war orthodoxy, and his frightening overview of the battlefield makes it clear this urgent debate must begin now.

If you like what you see here and want to get these bulletins by e-mail, please fill out our quick signup form at http://www.drcnet.org/signup.html.