Saying Yes

The nationally syndicated columnist and Reason magazine editor presents a damning portrait of how politicized government agencies antidrug activists and a nave national media have exaggerated the public''s fears of the harmful effects of recreational drugs. . Jacob Sullum goes beyond the debate on legalization or the proper way to win the war on drugs to the heart of a social and individual defense of using drugs. Saying Yes argues that the all-or-nothing thinking that has long dominated discussions of illegal drug use should give way to a wiser subtler approach exemplified by the tradition of moderate drinking. Saying Yes further contends that the conventional understanding of addiction portraying it as a kind of chemical slavery in which the user''s values and wishes do not matter is also fundamentally misleading.