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Reviewed by Gene McDougall in the Daily Herald, May 18, 2003

"Thoroughly documented scholarly treatises are supposed to be dull.  Not this time. 

"In making his case for ending our government's 25-year war against drugs, Stephen Young has written a book that is fascinating, shocking, frustrating, heartbreaking, sometimes downright horrifying - but never dull."

Read the whole review here. 

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Reviewed by Scotto in the Fall 2001 issue of Trip (www.tripzine.com)

After spending enough time identifying yourself as a member of the
psychedelic community at large, you begin to take for granted the
fact that the war on drugs is an awful monstrosity. You get used to
the numbing barrage of horror stories that seem to pour through news
outlets on a regular basis. You nod cynically and get on with your
life, moderately secure in the notion that they likely will never
catch you specifically, that you specifically will likely never have
your house seized or your loved ones gunned down in cold blood, that
you specifically will never rot in prison for preposterous amounts of
time for having the audacity to enjoy yourself in the privacy of your
own home.

Stephen Young's excellent Maximizing Harm: Losers and Winners in the
Drug War is like a big bucket of ice cold water dumped on your naked,
sleeping body. It's a slim work, but that's because it is
impressively concise in the way it catalogues the many abuses
perpetrated by the United States government against its own
citizenry. If you've been paying attention, you've likely heard most
of these facts before (and if you haven't, literally the last third
of the book is references), but having them assembled in such a
vicious portrait provides the book with its impact. There's an
undercurrent of self-righteousness in the book's organization and
presentation, but so what? The government has resorted to lying,
stealing, cheating, and murdering in order to get its way in this
war, and Young refuses to let them get away with it. He provides no
particular sense of hope beyond a few meager examples, but that's not
his fault; the situation remains dismal, and is not likely to improve
any time soon. Still, if you've been looking for ammunition to use
against your ignorant, conservative, pig-headed family or coworkers,
this book is it.