Cornbread Nation 7

Dan Baum is a former reporter with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. His book Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure is a well written, carefully documented, shocking expose of the U.S. government's ineffective, 30-year drug policy.

Baum uses his journalism background to document with statistics on drug use and abuse the failure of anti-drug efforts since 1967. He believes that the switch from viewing drug abuse as a health problem to drug abuse as a moral problem has ultimately resulted in injustices, especially the loss of Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment constitutional protections. In tracing policies through the administrations of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Baum gives examples of how drug busts not only disenfranchise minorities but also provide police department funding.

He is also the author of Citizen Coors: An American Dynasty and Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans.

030