I have to tell you that it seems to me that the conceptual base of the current program is flawed and the program is not likely to work.
—George P. Shultz

Imagine if every time you took an aspirin, you didn't know if it was 5 milligram or 500 milligrams.
—Ethan Nadelmann

The recent escalation in punitive drug policies has led to a growing number of drug war dissenters. Contrary to Mr. Bennett's Harvard speech, such opposition is no longer merely the province of intellectuals and liberals. Strong dissent has come from politicians and from the ranks of the drug warriors themselves.

Most of the remainder of this book is devoted to demonstrating that these dissenters are correct and that many of the passionate and well-intentioned theories of the president, the drug czar, and multitudes of experts are unsound and destructive. In this chapter, we seek to deal with fundamental arguments that raise serious questions about the facts and ideas that lie at the very base of current dominant drug-control strategies.

This chapter begins with the viewpoint of one of the most important people to join the ranks of the drug war dissenters, former Secretary of State George Shultz. In 1984 while serving under the Reagan Administration, Mr. Shultz advanced, much as President Bush did in 1989, a coordinated five-part plan to fight the drug problem. That same year Mr. Shultz stated: "We are confronting the threat and making significant progress." Five years later and coincidentally, the same year Bush announced his drug control strategy, Mr. Shultz went public with his belief that not only were we not making significant progress in controlling drugs, but drug prohibition was and is fundamentally flawed.