by Barry McCaffrey

About the author: Barry McCaffrey served as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy from 1996 to 2001.

Recent calls for legalization as the panacea for the nation’s drug ills should be taken with the salt of history. The tendency to forget much of America’s experience with addictive substances goes to the very nature of drugs and the culture they spawn. A drugged society suffers from long-term memory loss to the point of amnesia.

The lure of illegal drugs involves a desire for intense pleasure and instant reward. Drug users crave out-of-body joy and peace at the drop of a pill, in a few breaths, or within minutes of injection. Lost in the self and the present, the person on drugs is neither preparing for the future...