Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do about It: a Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs.

• Author: Morriss, Andrew P.

By James P. Gray Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 272. $19.95.

Judge James P. Gray, a California trial court judge since 1983, has come to believe that the war on drugs is an abject failure both on its own terms (stopping illegal drug use) and with regard to its impact on society. As an experienced trial judge and former federal prosecutor who briefly held a record for the largest drug prosecution in the Central District of California, Judge Gray is in a position to speak with authority about what is wrong with the war on drugs. He does so in compelling language. For example, he opens the book by promising readers that drug policy will someday change, and when it does, "we will look back in astonishment that we allowed our former policy to persist for so long, much as we look back now at slavery, or Jim Crow laws, or the days when women were prohibited from voting" (p. 5).

For the most part, Judge Gray offers utilitarian arguments against drug prohibition. Drug-prohibition laws are not actually reducing the amount of drugs available in the United States (pp. 47-94); enforcing drug prohibition is eroding our civil liberties (pp. 95-122); drug prohibition makes drugs more dangerous to drug users (pp. 123-36); and drug prohibition is leading to a stifling of democratic debate over drug policy (pp. 137-48). None of these arguments is new, but Judge Gray does a credible job of recounting the arguments and responding to potential criticisms. Unlike some opponents of drug prohibition, he stops short of advocating full legalization. (To his credit, he does insist that all options, including legalization, ought to be discussed.) His preferred solution is a combination of realistic education, treatment programs, regulated sales of drugs, and punishment for harm to others.

In speaking out publicly over the past decade on the failure of the war on drugs, Judge Gray courageously has joined the ever-growing chorus of federal and state judges who risk their professional reputations by dissenting from the orthodox position of prohibition at all costs. He deserves great credit for his willingness to speak out.

An author's moral courage alone, however, does not guarantee a great book, and this one is flawed in three important ways. First, Judge Gray relies heavily and at times almost exclusively on popular press accounts to support his factual claims. The vast majority of his citations are to newspaper articles (the Orange County Register...