Editor’s Introduction

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Over the last several decades there has been a growing wave of concern over the use and abuse of mind-altering substances that has left in its wake increasingly large expenditures for what is familiarly called the "War on Drugs," despite the simultaneously ever-expanding body of evidence attesting to that war's failure. Politicians running for public office routinely promise to solve these problems, but this only seems to mean filling our already over-crowded prisons beyond capacity with more people, many of whom may have done little more than use an illegal substance. The costs—both human and economic—to our society continue to skyrocket.

SOURCE:

Social Research, Vol. 68, No. 3, Altered States of Consciousness (FALL 2001), pp. vvi