Where in the article did it argue for or against drugs? It is more of a sociolgical reading, discussing patterns of drug use among Americans across generations, rather than an activist paper calling for legalization, or a populist one calling for stricter control. Anthropologists have studied and documented all manners of "unacceptable" human behaviour in primitive/savage societies, including cannibalism, incest, and pedophilia among others, but that doesn't mean they're passing judgment on their subject culture. I think we can extend a similar academic courtesy to the greatest and most savage of all societies :-)
I'd say that the instances where the article discusses the negatives of drug prohibition policy far outweigh the instances where the article discusses the negatives effects of drug use. In fact, the anti-drug discussion seems to go no further than an anecdote about cocaine usage, as opposed to many paragraphs spent retelling the pro-drug opinions of a Huffington Post writer that once worked for the Marijuana Policy Project.
I'm not strongly against the opinions put forth in this article, but I think that we should be clear that it is pro-drug.
Good point; the article is pretty academic and I appreciate it for that. I am tired of the argument I anticipated (and, to my dismay, it seems, created) here.
Where in the article did it argue for or against drugs? It is more of a sociolgical reading, discussing patterns of drug use among Americans across generations, rather than an activist paper calling for legalization, or a populist one calling for stricter control. Anthropologists have studied and documented all manners of "unacceptable" human behaviour in primitive/savage societies, including cannibalism, incest, and pedophilia among others, but that doesn't mean they're passing judgment on their subject culture. I think we can extend a similar academic courtesy to the greatest and most savage of all societies :-)