On 30 January 1982, to much publicity and acclaim, President Ronald Reagan announced the war on drugs and took the unprecedented step of appointing his vice president, George Bush, as chief coordinator of drug policy. As a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Bush seemed both a logical choice and a strong indication of the administration's resolve to extirpate this growing cancer from the body politic. With stirring speeches the vice president announced that the American people had had enough and that his office would coordinate all of the chief law enforcement agencies of the federal government "to stop the storm surge of cocaine" and other drugs "drowning" the citizens of the United States "in a sea of murders, violence, and blood-drenched narcodollars." Targeting the seedbed of narcotics distribution, south Florida, Bush declared that the U.S. Attorney's Office; the Drug Enforcement Agency...