Introduction

Extract

In the last decade, drug usage has become a matter of great concern in American society. Questions abound about who uses drugs and why. Surveys that purport to answer questions such as these remain suspect because of fears that respondents either may be lying or, in fact, may not be the real habitual consumers of drugs. The presumed link between drug usage and violent crimes is an act of faith in a society that perceived itself to be under siege from drugs throughout the 1980s. No prominent public official, whether it was President Ronald Reagan or William J. Bennett, who served as President George Bush's first director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, could ease the sense of alarm and foreboding evoked by drugs. How could the traffic in drugs be stopped? How would America's streets be made safe again?