Krauss, Melvyn B, et al, Eds. Searching for Alternatives: Drug-Control Policy in the United States. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. December 1992, 454 pages.
 A survey of the drug policy debate, Searching for Alterntives features essays by thirty respected champions of divergent views. This volume presents new and important empirical data; incorporates arguments from historical, sociological, legal, medical, economic, and international perspectives; and examines both the effectiveness of existing laws and the likely ramifications of decriminalization proposals.
"Clearly prohibition has failed. The criminalization of a social problem - drug use - leads only to escalating levels of violence, which leads to a fearful public clamoring for more prisons, tougher laws, and fewer rights. In the end, everybody loses except for the drug dealers."
-- Ira Glasser, "Drug Prohibition: An Engine for Crime"
"The attempt to enforce the prohibition of the use of drugs is destroying our poorer neighborhoods in city after city, creating a climate that is destructive to the people who live there. This phenomenon is perhaps the greatest disgrace in the United States at the moment. I say "perhaps" because an alternative is what we are doing to other countries...Can anybody tell me that the United States of America is justified in destroying Colombia because the United States cannot enforce its own laws?"
-- Milton Friedman, "The War We Are Losing"
"To prevent an increase in the number of users of illicit drugs, with the attendant personal and societal costs, to keep faith with international obligations, and to avoid changing course just when current efforts are beginning to show significant progress, proposals for the legalization of illicit drugs should be soundly rejected.."
-- Edwin Meese III, "Drugs, Change, and Realism: A Critical Evaluation of Proposed Legalization"
About the Authors
Melvin B. Krauss is a Senior Felow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics at that University since 1976.
Edward P. Lazear, is a Senior Felow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of Urban and Labor Economics at the University of Chicago.
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