"Cocaine Nation": The argument for legal cocaine

The author of a new book explains why our attitude toward the white powder is wrong -- and how we can fix it
By Justin Sullivan
Salon

According to Tom Feiling, a London-based journalist and human rights organizer and the author of the new book "Cocaine Nation: How the White Trade Took Over the World," the best solution to America's cocaine problem is simple: make the drug legal. For many people, that's going to be a hard sell. While public perception about marijuana seems to be changing, cocaine still conjures up images of high-class leisure and rock star debauchery -- associations with wealth and luxury that makes any argument for legalization considerably more thorny.

But his book makes a persuasive case: Feiling speaks with coca farmers, police officers, government officials, producers and even doctors -- and emerges with a dire portrait of America's "War on Drugs" (a term the Obama administration has already jettisoned). The U.S. is set to spend $40 billion and arrest 1.5 million citizens this year in a policy that three-fourths of the county sees as misguided. Feiling uses an evenhanded and well-research approach to the subject. His case for legalization, he argues, stems from practical concerns: "It’s about more accountability, not less."

Salon talked with Feiling over the phone from London about the difference between cocaine and pot, the possible dangers of legalization, and the important lessons of "The Wire."

(More here.)