Wisconsin's best known drug policy reformer, Weedstock organizer Ben Masel, was pepper-sprayed and arrested by University of Wisconsin-Madison police as he collected signatures for his senatorial campaign the evening of June 30. He was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting a police officer, trespassing, and remaining after being warned to leave, all misdemeanors.

Masel is running for the Democratic US Senate nomination against incumbent Sen. Herb Kohl. He is accepting only $1 donations and says he will have a web site up soon. He has until Tuesday to turn in his signatures and said this week he is confident he will make the ballot.

The long-time activist was at the UW Memorial Union collecting signatures during a hip-hop concert when two union managers told him he could not solicit signatures on the property and asked him to leave. Masel "politely declined," explaining that he is allowed to collect signatures on public property. The managers again asked him to leave and called campus police when he failed to do so. Campus police officers John McCaughtry and Michael Mansavage accosted Masel, pepper-sprayed him in the eyes, then pepper-sprayed him again while he was on the ground and restrained.

Masel -- whose is only accepting contributions of $1 -- said he never struggled with the officers and would have gone along willingly if the police had asked. "If they had said something along the lines of 'Mr. Masel, you're under arrest,' I would have put my hands behind my back and complied," he said.

The entire incident was witnessed by -- among others -- Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who told the Wisconsin State Journal Masel wasn't bothering anyone. "I didn't feel Ben was causing any disruptions," Cieslewicz said. "I certainly didn't feel he was disrupting my evening at all. I didn't see a reason to remove him from the terrace."

Wisconsin Union assistant facilities director Roger Vogts told the Journal the Memorial Union has a policy forbidding people from handing out literature, collecting signatures, or similar activities. "We don't want people coming in, going table to table, bothering people," Vogts said.

But the union has been inconsistent in enforcing its legally questionable policy. In the wake of the incident, the Capital Times contacted several politicians who said they routinely solicited signatures at the spot where Masel was arrested. They were never asked to leave, let alone assaulted and arrested, they said.

The UW Memorial Union and its cops picked on the wrong guy, as Masel is notorious for winning lawsuits against state and local officials for violating his rights. He has filed and won lawsuits against Dane County for blocking his leafleting at the Harvest Festival, against then Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) for denying permits for the festival and over the issue of amplification at the festival, against the city of Madison over leafleting the US Conference of Mayors in 2005, and against a community college and the city of Madison for being arrested while leafleting for an anti-drug war district attorney candidate. Masel's biggest win (and payout) came in Sauk County, where the county had to pay him $95,000 after illegally arresting him during the 2000 Weedstock festival.

He is also suing police in Kansas City over a 2001 incident on an Amtrak passenger train. Masel was traveling from Albuquerque to Chicago when police boarded the train and asked two young men to consent to a warrantless search of their belongings. Masel stood and informed the young men they had the right to refuse a search, after which police arrested him for obstruction of justice. He is seeking punitive damages for violation of his free speech rights and compensation for repeated trips to Missouri to fight the case against him, which was eventually dropped.

Now the university's Memorial Union will be the next to face a Masel lawsuit, he told DRCNet. "First, I'll be defending against the criminal charges, and then I will be bringing a countersuit on behalf of the campaign for violating free speech rights and against the officers for excessive use of force," he said. "There was not even a smidgen of justification for that second spraying when I was on the ground with the guy's knee in my back. The unnecessary force claim will focus on that one that they have no defense for. And I have some great witnesses," Masel laughed. "The mayor was sitting only eight feet away."

The incident has aided his signature-gathering effort, Masel said. "It's been a lot easier to collect signatures since I got pepper-sprayed," he said. "And the state Democratic Party chair, who had promised me a speaking slot at the convention, but then didn't have me on the list very quickly, turned around and gave me a slot after my arrest."

Masel, whose activism has taken place under varying banners, said he was running as a Democrat because the incumbent, Herb Kohl, did little and because the party claimed it was open to grassroots activism. "There's been a lot of rhetoric from Howard Dean and the state Democratic Party here about how the party is more open now, so I decided to test them. They haven't quite passed with flying colors, but they haven't failed the test, either," he said.

While he is known primarily as a drug reformer, Masel is not emphasizing the issue -- because he doesn't have to. "I'm so known statewide on drug policy, I don't actually have to talk about it much. The reporters will always ask me about it." Instead, he is emphasizing concerns about the Patriot Act and related electronic privacy issues and says his first bill as senator would tighten the War Powers Act to make it more difficult for presidents to take the country to war. "I'm trying to break out of the one-trick pony thing on drug policy," he said.

South Australian Member of Parliament Sandra Kanck aroused some ire in her country, including from Democratic colleagues, when she told her fellow parliamentarians that "ecstasy is not a dangerous drug." This month she went on to say that she had attended a "rave" and that she felt much safer there than if she had been out at a bar. Again fellow politicos were neither enraptured nor amused.

Is ecstasy a dangerous drug? Certainly a lot of people say it is. Are they giving us the "straight dope" on that issue?

One way to decide this question is to look at the numbers. When former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman called for new mandatory minimum sentences for the drug in summer 2000, I took a look at the statistics, and was stunned to find that only eight deaths had been attributed to it by the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) during 1998, the latest year for which the statistics were yet available. That was a national statistic, not New Jersey, and it was not clear in every case that ecstasy was the cause as opposed to just being present in the situation.

Compared this with the well over a hundred thousand dying each year from alcohol and the hundreds of thousands from nicotine -- well, I'm not sure what to say about it. Any preventable death is a tragedy. But is such a relatively miniscule number enough to justify calling ecstasy is a dangerous drug in the grand scheme of things? A study in the British Medical Journal made a similar finding, 81 deaths related to the drug between 1997 and 2000, 20 per year.

Certainly the numbers are larger now, as the drug's popularity has increased. But still we are looking at pretty small numbers. The DAWN mortality report for 2003 said that "clubs drugs were reported infrequently." Ecstasy is just one of the club drugs, so it was even less frequent when looking at ecstasy alone. Even adjusting for the larger number of users of those drugs, it is still night and day. And those numbers could be further reduced by ending prohibition of ecstasy to insure its purity and that users will know its potency, and by pill testing, safety information and other harm reduction programs operating in places like raves as Kanck suggested. Since neither ecstasy nor raves are likely to go away anytime soon, instituting those measures widely would be a good move. DanceSafe's web site is a good place to get information about that topic.

I would hesitate to say that any drug is completely safe, and the mortality numbers are greater than zero -- using ecstasy should by no means be done lightly without aforethought -- but the numbers also seem to say that ecstasy's dangers are radically less than many other widely used substances. So I would likewise hesitate to say that ecstasy is truly "dangerous," in the sense that most people think when hearing that word used.

Certainly the moves to enact draconian criminal sentences for ecstasy seem kind of bizarre in that light. In that light I would say that politicians are much more dangerous than ecstasy. The good Ms. Kanck and like-minded ones excepted, of course.

Please submit listings of events concerning drug policy and related topics to [email protected].

June 23, 7:30-8:30pm, Lansing, MI, book talk with "Burning Rainbow Farm" author Dean Kuipers. At Schuler Books and Music, 2820 Towne Center Blvd., Eastwood Shopping Center, contact Laura Keefe at (646) 307-5580 or [email protected] for further information.

June 29, 7:00-10:00pm, Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles CityBeat party in honor of "Burning Rainbow Farm." At Café-Club Fais Do-Do, 5257 W Adams Blvd., contact Laura Keefe at (646) 307-5580 or [email protected] for further information.

July 3, 8:00pm-1:00am, Portland, OR, benefit concert for Citizens for a Safer Portland marijuana low-priority initiative, featuring music State of Jefferson and The Buffalo Riders and guest Rob Kampia of MPP. At Lola's Room, 1332 W. Burnside St. (below the Crystal Ballroom), 21 and over, admission $15 at door, visit http://www.makeportlandsafer.org or call (503) 236-0205 for further information.

July 4, Washington, DC, Fourth of July Rally, sponsored by the Fourth of July Hemp Coalition. At Lafayette Park, call (202) 251-4492 or visit http://www.smoke-in.org for further information.

July 14, 5:30-8:00pm, Chicago, IL, cocktail reception with Judge James P. Gray, author of "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs." Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel, 163 East Walton Place, admission free, contact Nikki Comerford at (312) 377-4000 or [email protected] for further information.

July 15-20, Chicago, IL, "Freedom, Tolerance, and Civil Society," free summer seminar for college students, sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies. At Loyola University, visit http://www.i-liberty.org by April 10 for information or to apply -- apply before March 31 and receive a free book.

July 20-23, Vancouver, BC, Canada, "Fourth Biennial International Meaning Conference on Addiction," contact Dr. Paul T.P. Wong at [email protected] or visit http://www.meaning.ca for information.

July 21, 7:00pm, Washington, DC, "Race to Incarcerate," book talk with The Sentencing Project's Marc Mauer. At Politics & Prose bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave., NW, visit http://www.politics-prose.com for further information.

August 19-20, Seattle, WA, Seattle Hempfest, visit http://www.hempfest.org for further information.

September 16, noon-6:00pm, Boston, MA, 17th Annual Boston Freedom Rally. On Boston Common, sponsored by MASS CANN/NORML, featuring bands, speakers and vendors. Visit http://www.MassCann.org for further information.

October 7-8, Madison, WI, 36th Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival, sponsored by Madison NORML. At the Library Mall, downtown, visit http://www.madisonnorml.org for further information.

November 9-12, Oakland, CA, "Drug User Health: The Politics and the Personal," 6th National Harm Reduction Conference. Sponsored by the Harm Reduction Coalition, for further information visit http://www.harmreduction.org/6national/ or contact Paula Santiago at [email protected].

February 1-3, 2007, Salt Lake City, UT, "Science & Response: 2007, The Second National Conference on Methamphetamine, HIV, and Hepatitis," sponsored by the Harm Reduction Project. At the Hilton City Center, visit http://www.methconference.org for info.

perspectives on the death of Len Bias 20 years later, from the University of Maryland's Diamondback

UNODC 2005 Andean Coca Survey

summer 2006 issue of Oaksterdam News

Bolivian President Evo Morales traveled to the town of Irupana in Bolivia's Yungas coca-growing region Saturday to preside over the opening of a factory where coca leaves will be made into legal products. Morales, who rose to power as the leader of a confederation of coca growers' unions has vowed to seek alternative legal uses for the plant as part of his anti-cocaine strategy.

"Manufacturing coca products doesn't do any harm because coca isn't a drug," Morales told hundreds of coca growing peasants in Irupana in an address that was televised around the country. "They're going to make flour, tea, soft drinks and other products in the first two plants," he said.

Earlier this year, Morales traveled the world, in part to seek markets for coca products, and that strategy may be paying off. The Associated Press reported Bolivian government officials saying that China, Cuba, India, and Venezuela have already expressed interest in buying coca products.

Morales has positioned himself alongside Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro as part of a leftist pole in hemispheric affairs. Bolivian Agriculture Minister Hugo Salvatierra told Bolivian state television that Chavez has pledged $1 million to fund two coca-processing factories.

Although current Bolivian law limits coca production to some 29,000 acres in the Yungas, unsanctioned production is occurring there, as well as in the Chapare region. According to US and UN figures, Bolivia is the world's third largest coca producer, after Colombia and Peru. US government policy is to eradicate unsanctioned coca, but Morales would rather find legitimate markets for it.

Scotland's drug czar (or "tsar," as the Scots like it) has unleashed a week of furious debate by declaring that the war on drugs is lost and can never be won. The remarks by Tom Wood, chairman of the Scottish Association of Alcohol and Drug Action Teams, are only the latest in a series of similar declarations coming from Scottish politicians and law enforcement figures as the nation attempts to confront its intractable affair with illicit drugs. Despite decades of drug war, Scotland has some of the highest drug use rates in Europe and more than 50,000 heroin addicts.

"I spent much of my police career fighting the drugs war and there was no one keener than me to fight it," Woods said in an interview with Scotland on Sunday. "But latterly I have become more and more convinced that it was never a war we could win. We can never as a nation be drug-free. No nation can, so we must accept that. So the message has to be more sophisticated than 'just say no,' because that simple message doesn't work," said the man charged with advising the Scottish Executive on future drug policy. "For young people who have already said 'yes,' who live in families and communities where everybody says 'yes,' we have to recognize that the battle is long lost."

Wood said he was not advocating decriminalization or legalization of drugs, but a fundamental shift of priorities. "Throughout the last three decades, enforcement has been given top priority, followed by treatment and rehabilitation, with education and deterrence a distant third. In order to make a difference in the long term, education and deterrence have to go to the top of the pile. We have to have the courage and commitment to admit that we have not tackled the problem successfully in the past. It's about our priorities and our thinking," said Wood. "Clearly, at some stage, there could be resource implications, but the first thing we have to do is realize we can't win any battles by continuing to put enforcement first."

Scotland's main drug fighters, the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), unsurprisingly differed with Wood's analysis. "I strongly disagree when he says that the war on drugs in Scotland is lost," said SCDEA head Graeme Pearson. "The Scottish Executive Drug Action Plan acknowledged that tackling drug misuse is a complex problem, demanding many responses. It is explicit within the strategy that to effectively tackle drug misuse, the various pillars of the plan cannot operate in isolation."

While Pearson defended current policies, anti-drug crusader Alistair Ramsey, former director of Scotland Against Drugs, was fulminating against too much emphasis on treatment. "We must never lose sight of the fact that enforcement of drug law is a very powerful prevention for many people and, if anything, drug law should be made more robust," he told the newspaper. "The current fixation with treatment and rehabilitation on behalf of the Executive has really got to stop."

Scottish Conservative justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell joined the attack: "I accept Wood's sincerity, but this is a very dangerous message to go out. I would never say that we have lost the war on drugs. Things are dire, but we should never throw up the white flag," she said.

On Monday, Scottish Health Minister joined the fray, comparing eliminating drug use to providing healthy school lunches. "If you'd said Scotland's kids would be eating more healthily in school, they would have said it couldn't be done, so I'm very positive about these matters. We need to be positive and there's different ways of doing this. We're working hard to make sure we're successful and I do believe we can win that war, but it's going to need a lot of hard effort," he insisted.

Wood's view did gain backing from groups like the Scottish Drugs Forum and the drug prevention and advice group Crew 2000. "I think Tom Wood is right. This is something our organization has been arguing for for a long time and it is good to see this is now coming into the mainstream," said Crew 2000 manager John Arthur.

Wood was unbowed Monday as he took pains to praise Scottish police. "The Scottish drugs enforcement agency is one of the best in Europe" he said. "However, we have to accept that police activity has not reduced supply. It has not made a difference to the price or the purity."

If you smoke a joint Friday night and drive to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Monday morning in Michigan, you can be arrested, charged, and convicted as a drugged driver because inactive chemical traces of THC, or metabolites, remain in your bloodstream. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that motorists can be convicted of Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) even if they are not under the influence of drugs. According to the Supreme Court opinion in the consolidated cases Derror v. Michigan and Kurts v. Michigan authored by Justice Maura Corrigan, actual innocence of driving while impaired is "irrelevant."

In both cases, authorities charged the defendants under the Michigan DUID law based on the presence of cannabis metabolites, an inert byproduct of the body's breakdown of THC, in their blood. The presence of metabolites does not indicate impairment or being "under the influence"; it only indicates that someone ingested THC at some time in the past, as the state Supreme Court acknowledged in its ruling. Both trial courts held that the metabolite was not "marijuana" and thus a controlled substance under state law, a position upheld on appeal.

Both a majority on the Supreme Court disagreed. Neither the DUID nor the controlled substances law "requires that a substance have pharmacological properties to constitute a schedule I controlled substance," the majority held. Neither does the DUID law "require that a defendant be impaired while driving. Rather, it punishes for the operation of a motor vehicle with any amount of schedule I controlled substance in the body."

Then, breathtakingly, Justice Corrigan wrote, "It is irrelevant that a person who is no longer 'under the influence' of marijuana could be prosecuted under the statute. If the Legislature had intended to prosecute only people who were under the influence while driving, it could have written the statute accordingly."

Now, any Michigan driver who has smoked marijuana in the last few days or, in the case of heavier smokers, up to three or four weeks, is subject to a DUID arrest based on the presence of inert leftover metabolites that do not actually indicate impairment. In a harsh dissent, Justice Michael Cavanaugh warned the court it would criminalize a huge class of people.

"Today's holding now makes criminals out of numerous Michigan citizens who, before today, were considered law-abiding, productive members of our community," he wrote. "Now, if a person has ever actively or passively ingested marijuana and drives, he is [unknowingly] breaking the law, because if any amount of [cannabis metabolites] can be detected -- no matter when [the marijuana] was previously ingested -- he is committing a crime. The majority's interpretation, which has no rational relationship to the Legislature's genuine concerns about operating a motor vehicle while impaired, violates the United States Constitution and the Michigan Constitution."

The ruling could have an impact beyond Michigan. Twelve other states have enacted laws making it a criminal offense to drive under the influence of drugs. They use standards similar to those upheld this week -- the presence of trace levels of drugs or metabolites -- to assume impairment. Unlike drunk driving laws, which assume a certain blood alcohol level after which one is considered impaired, the DUID laws assume that the presence of any metabolite or trace proves impairment.

A federal prison contraband-for-sex scandal exploded into lethal violence Wednesday. And then there's the run of the mill: A one-time Wisconsin deputy goes down in a major marijuana bust, a former Mississippi deputy goes down for meth, a San Francisco prosecutor goes to prison for taking Ecstasy bribes, and a former Alabama deputy gets ready to go to prison for providing a gun and some crack rocks to an ex-con. Let's get to it:

In Tallahassee, Florida, a federal prison guard and a Department of Justice officer are dead, a second officer was wounded, and five more prison guards were arrested Wednesday when federal agents showed up to arrest the six guards on charges they smuggled contraband -- alcohol, marijuana, cash, and messages -- into the prison in exchange for sexual favors from inmates at the 1,400-woman facility. Federal Bureau of Prisons guard Ralph Hill opened fire when the feds arrived inside the prison, killing Justice Department Office of the Inspector General agent William Sentner and wounding an unnamed, uninvolved prison guard before being killed by other federal agents. Guards Alfred Barnes, Gregory Dixon, Ralph Hill, Vincent Johnson, Alan Moore and E. Lavon Spence face charges of engaging in a conspiracy to commit acts of bribery, witness tampering, and mail fraud; and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering. They could face up to 20 years in prison.

In Dunn, Wisconsin, a former Dane County sheriff's deputy was arrested June 14 on federal marijuana distribution conspiracy charges. Robert Lowery, 57, is accused in federal affidavits of employing a young Genesee, Wisconsin, couple to bring hundreds of pounds of pot to Wisconsin from Arizona. During a raid on his home by state Department of Criminal Investigation and Dane County deputies, the cops seized 15 pounds of pot, 25 ounces of cocaine, five guns, and $47,000 cash. They also seized 52 dogs, including 50 pit bulls, and arrested Lowery's wife on weapons and cocaine possession charges. Lowery was fired as Dane County deputy in 1981 after being accused of seeking information to provide to drug dealing associates, and charging documents allege he has been in the business ever since. The young couple has also been charged.

In Hancock County, Mississippi, a former constable and Hancock County deputy sheriff was arrested June 14 on methamphetamine possession and sales charges. Danny Hamby, 38, was one of three men arrested in a drug raid that netted a half-ounce of speed following an eight-month investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, Coastal Narcotics Enforcement Team, the DEA, and the Hancock County Sheriff's Department. Hamby was elected constable in 1999, but resigned two years later as part of a plea agreement in a domestic violence case. He then went to work briefly as a Hancock County deputy. He is being held without bond in a neighboring county jail.

In San Francisco, a former city assistant district attorney is going to prison for six months after pleading guilty to accepting drugs in exchange for leniency for two defendants he was prosecuting. Robert Roland, 35 was sentenced June 14 after a pleading guilty in February to three counts of Ecstasy possession and one count of using a telephone in a felony drug transaction. In one case, Roland dropped a felony drug count to a misdemeanor for a high school buddy, who repaid him with Ecstasy the next day. In a second case, another acquaintance supplied him with Ecstasy after he discussed diverting that case into treatment. Both of those cases occurred in 2002. Roland reports to prison August 1.

In Montgomery, Alabama, a former Houston County deputy pleaded guilty Monday to selling a gun to a convicted felon and supplying him with cocaine to sell. Michael Shawn Campbell, 27, who was working for the Houston County narcotics unit at the time, admitted selling the gun to Joshua Whigan, who he knew to be a felon, and to supplying him with crack. Whigan ratted him out. Both men await sentencing, and Campbell faces up to 40 years on the drug charge and another 10 for the gun charge.

Many DRCNet readers remember the heartbreaking tragedy of Rainbow Farm, the alternative campground and concert site outside Vandalia, Michigan, where marijuana activists Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm, driven to desperation by a relentless prosecutor, were killed by FBI and state police in fall 2001. Killed for no good reason -- as a local sympathizer expressed it to Drug War Chronicle's Phil Smith at the funeral, "[Prosecutor] Scott Teter said this was their choice, but it was his choice to hound them and try to take their land and their son. He's the one who chose to shoot and kill." Rohm and Crosslin before the end burned down their beloved buildings to keep the government from getting them.

Journalist Dean Kuipers of the Los Angeles CityBeat has now written "Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went up in Smoke," a 304-page book being released by Bloomsbury USA this June 13. DRCNet is offering "Burning Rainbow Farm" as our latest membership premium -- donate $35 or more to DRCNet, and we will send you a copy -- donate $45 or more and we will send you one signed by the author. Your donations will help our work to end drug prohibition, while raising awareness of the recklessness and excesses of drug enforcers like prosecutor Teter -- click here to donate and order your copy.

Publishers Weekly writes of Kuipers' book, "Drawing on extensive interviews, government documents and news coverage, the author [who grew up 20 miles from the shootings] verges on portraying the prosecutor as evil incarnate. But Kuipers doesn't cross the line from sound journalism into advocacy, while letting the story unfold through superbly detailed characterizations and skillful pacing."

We also continue to offer the DVD video Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the 5th edition of Drug War Facts. Add $5 to the minimum donation to add either of these to your request, or $10 to add both of them. Again, you can make your donation and place your order online, or send a check or money order to: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036. (Note that contributions to Drug Reform Coordination Network, which support our lobbying work, are not tax-deductible. Deductible contributions can be made to DRCNet Foundation, same address.) Lastly, please contact us for instructions if you wish to make a donation of stock. (Also note that copies of Rainbow Farm will be mailed out from DRCNet during the third week of June.)

Thank you for your support. If you want to read more about Rainbow Farm in the meanwhile, please see Phil's articles in the Drug War Chronicle archive: Michigan Drug Warriors Drive Marijuana Activists to the Brink, Then Gun Them Down on 9/7/01; Rainbow Farm Marijuana Activists Laid to Rest, Friends Not Resting on 9/21; and Phil's book review last week.

Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

"Demons, Discrimination, and Dollars: A Brief History of the Origins of American Drug Policy," by David Bearman (2005, Prosperity Press, $18.95 PB)

"The Definitive Answer to the War on Drugs," by Micah Charles (2005, Author House, $12.95 PB)

"The Beginning of Today: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937," by Kenneth White (2004, Publish America, $9.00 PB)

"The Naked Truth About Drugs," by Daniel Williams (2004, Cronin House, $24.95 HB)

On the eve of American independence, the colonies were awash with wild-eyed radicals taking pen to hand to denounce the latest iniquities of the British crown. Tom Paine is perhaps the best known of those colonial rabble-rousers; his pamphlet "Common Sense" was a clarion call to rebellion against the injustices of colonial rule. But he was by no means alone; Paine, in fact, was representative of a hands-on, egalitarian impulse that appeared early in American society, an impulse that cried out "I have something to say and every right to be heard!"

More than two centuries later, that impulse is alive and well -- at least when it comes to the war on drugs. There is something about the issue that excites people to have their say. Other public policy issues seem to attract less outrage and fewer grassroots efforts to articulate a critique. Where, for example, are the hordes of self-published authors jumping into print with autodidactic tomes on the politics of waste water management or the epidemiology of mumps?

Perhaps it is because the drug war and drug prohibition feels so fundamentally wrong to so many American idealists. You know them: The people who actually believe all that stuff they told us when we were kids. The people who believe America is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The people who believe America is -- or should be -- a shining beacon of freedom. The people whose attitudes toward government in general and drug prohibition in particular could be summed up by the famous coiled snake flag of the Revolutionary War: "Don't tread on me."

These days, would-be pamphleteers have other options. They can take to the Internet and blog away, as do folks like Peter Guither at Drug War Rant), Radley Balko at The Agitator, or Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast. (The latter two sites are broader than drug policy). Or they can become part of the new breed of movement journalists, like rebel radioman Dean Becker of the Drug Truth Network, Richard Cowan of Marijuana News, Preston Peet of Drug War.com, or yours truly with Drug War Chronicle. But there is something both extremely satisfying and quintessentially American in wanting to see one's impassioned ideas between the covers of a book. Here is what four of these contemporary Tom Paines are up to:

In "The Naked Truth About Drugs," author Daniel Williams provides an engaging, well-written account of various popular illicit substances and their prohibition histories. One part drug-taking memoir, one part pharmacological treatise, one part concise historical and cultural study, "The Naked Truth" provides an accessible point of entry to the debates over illegal drugs as well as solid suggestions for where we go from here. And Williams asks the key question: "Who benefits from the war on drugs?" "The Naked Truth" is an interesting, opinionated, and passionate effort, so much so that the author can be forgiven for using a nude photo of himself on the front cover.

"In the Beginning of Today," California attorney and law professor Kenneth White undertakes a detailed examination of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the founding act of federal pot prohibition in the US, and uses it as a lead-in to a discussion of ending the war on marijuana. With chapters on the run-up to the Tax Act, the politics surrounding the Act, and current US marijuana policy and its alternatives, White covers a lot of ground in this concise volume. While his discussion of the Tax Act is likely to prove slow reading for all but historians and legal scholars, White's discussion of where we go from here is succinct and well thought-out.

In "The Definitive Answer to the War on Drugs," Micah Charles lays out a legalization scheme that would doubtless win the approval of Bolivian President Evo Morales and countless Afghan opium farmers, as well as all those "marijuana as sacrament" people. Charles summarizes his argument in one sentence printed on the book's cover: "Give back to mankind their right to all plants and the drug war will dissolve itself." Charles' naturalistic approach, however, would leave synthetic drugs like amphetamines or plant alkaloids like cocaine and heroin illegal, leading one to ask whether he has indeed come up with "the definitive answer," but he at least takes the discussion to a new level.

In "Demons, Discrimination, and Dollars," long-time drug treatment specialist Dr. David Bearman examines the tangled cultural and historical roots of drug prohibition in the US and the Western world. This is a familiar story, but Bearman has a deft touch and makes the material feel new and refreshing as he takes us through witch hysteria, tales of crazed Negroes on cocaine, Reefer Madness, and scary "hippies on acid" propaganda. Bearman finds the roots of prohibition in racism and religious fears and addresses how those causes have been joined by the economic benefits prohibition brings for important social actors.

At the very end of his book, Bearman resorts to a tellingly All-American appeal to authority. He quotes Thomas Jefferson: "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government," the founding father wrote. It is fitting indeed that this modern day pamphleteer bring the American story in all its glory and tragedy back to its beginnings.