The drug policy field itself is a meeting ground for many professions, and
the exclusive province of none. This pamphlet is intended to serve the need for
a common frame of reference for all who will participate in the drug policy
leadership group for interposition, and it represents a conscious effort to
synthesize from the intellectual tools of the relevant professions an outlook and
vocabulary that will serve the interest of interdisciplinary cooperation. The
drug/crime epidemic is a societal phenomenon, so it can best be understood
through the lens of social science theory. At the same time, epidemiology
provides a useful and ready-made conceptual framework for the marshaling of
the relevant social science concepts and data, so this pamphlet is deliberately
couched in the key terms and concepts of epidemiology set out in the first pages.

* * *

If this pamphlet were a third longer, space would have been available to
document the failure of drug control policy and the high cost we are paying for
that failure. The absence of material on this subject will prove an irritant to
readers not familiar with it, because, in this text, the failure of drug policy is
taken as a given and nowhere documented. For the reader not yet familiar with
the failure of drug policy, excellent treatments are available elsewhere. Several
sources are cited in the text and references. In the interest of brevity, the focus of
this writing has been restricted to the social dynamics, or etiology, of the
drug/crime epidemic (Part I) and the analysis of the interposition remedy (Parts
II and III).

* * *

In 1492, the big question was how to get to the East. Before the proof was in,
many of the contemporaries of Columbus had difficulty seeing how his "sail
west" answer fit the question. The lesson is that, if we are to recognize the
validity of a solution or answer, we humans must first properly frame the
problem or question in the relevant facts.

The preceding paragraph explains the organization of this booklet. In order
to maximize the likelihood that the reader will later recognize the fit between
the solution and the problem, Part I of this booklet frames the drug/crime
problem in the relevant facts. The reader could skip Part I and go directly to the
Part II (which treats the antidote to the drug/crime epidemic), but you are more
likely to be on board when the ship sails westward if you read in the order of
presentation. That is because the interposition solution is predicated on a novel
(if not revolutionary) integration of the relevant facts. The drug problem is
solvable, but not with flat-world preconceptions.

* * *

A drug policyis a plan for guidance of governmental actions regarding
drugs. The only rational and morally justifiable objective of public policy
regarding drugs is the defense of health and welfare against drug-inflicted harm.
By an accident of history, drug control,rather than the defense of public health
and welfare,is the objective of U.S. public policy. We have drug control policy,
rather than a drug policy.When drug controlbecomes the object of public