Three leading drug policy analysts, including RBC’s own Mark Kleiman, have produced an extremely user-friendly overview of the field entitled Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know.

The book is structured as a sort of Socratic dialogue, with a series of questions ranging from those involving basic knowledge (e.g., “What is a drug?”, “Didn’t Holland legalise cannabis?”) to more abstruse concepts (e.g., “What is behavioral triage”) to philosophical/ethical concerns (e.g., “Why should mere pleasure count as a benefit?”, “Why do arguments about drug policy get so irrational and so mean-spirited?”). The answers are brief, clearly-written and down-to-earth. No one will agree with all the answers given but that’s a feature, not a bug.

Congratulations to Mark as well as Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken for writing a fine book that deserves a wide audience.