Stanton Peele on Why We Have Drug Scares

Why does the drug scare meme appear so regularly in America? If we accept at face value that, indeed, so many substances have reared their ugly, panic-inspiring heads in such regular succession, then it seems we have never gotten a handle on drugs in America, and we never will, as drug scares stretch behind and before us ad infinitum. By embodying these irresolvable social problems and dilemmas in drugs, we hold out the ever present hope that American medicine will solve them, most likely using pharmaceuticals. And that, writes Stanton Peele, is the greatest drug scare of all.