War Without End  Sketches of the Drug Czars  The United States
spends nearly $50 billion each year on the war on drugs, to
little avail: illegal drugs remain prevalent, and drug-funded
groups continue to spread violence from Mexico to Afghanistan.
The new White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, says he wants to
end the drug war, but other men in his position have tried and
failed to do just that. In this illustrated history, Ricardo
Cortes shows how science, politics, ego, and scandal transformed
a public-health initiative into a century-long military
campaign. There’s no consensus on exactly when the drug war
began, but here’s one logical starting point: the Harrison
Narcotics Act of 1914, when the federal government first
restricted access to such medicines-gone-wild as cocaine and
morphine. In 1937, the prohibition expanded to marijuana; Harry
J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
from 1930 to 1962, believed the plant caused murder and lunacy.
He led a public campaign against the pl