Negative Space: Thomas Szasz
- Beyond the War on Drugs: Overcoming a Failed Public Policy
- Steven Wisotsky’s 1990 book is subtitled “Breaking the Impasse in the War on Drugs”. It comes with an introduction by Thomas Szasz and in many ways is a repeat of so many books that have come before, chronicling the failures of the war on drugs but it also quantifies the “successes”: how the war on drugs energizes crime and corruption. “The law can imprison a black marketeer, but not the market itself.”
- Ceremonial Chemistry
- Thomas Szasz subtitled this “The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers”. It’s a brilliant piece of work drawing on history from as far back as the witch trials and persecution of Jews. His thesis is that mankind requires scapegoats on a ritual scale. While hardly a ground-breaking idea, the depth of his examination is.
- Our Right to Drugs
- What is it about drugs that make us more scared about them than chainsaws, bleach, and gasoline? Thomas Szasz writes, with a historical and psychiatric perspective, about what can produce a holy utopia where parents will send their children to prison, and children their parents.
More Information
- Ceremonial Chemistry• (paperback)
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Subtitled “The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers.” Throughout modern history, we have treated drugs as if they were living creatures; we have chosen our culture’s recreational drugs and thrown all else into the outer darkness. What about us, or about drugs, results in such insane acts? Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz analyzes our culture and the history of drug prohibitions and shows us the dangers in our ever-present addiction to scapegoats. This is a spot-on critique of mankind’s desire for a scapegoat, and the length that we’ll go to create one. (Thomas Szasz)
