In the May 1999 issue of Harper's Magazine, Joshua Wolf Shenk's article "America's Altered States: When Legal Relief from Does pain become an illegal pursuit of pleasure? states: From 1970 to 1998, inflation-adjusted revenues of big pharmaceutical companies more than quadrupled to $81 billion, 24 percent of which came from drugs affecting the central nervous system and sense organs. Sales of medicinal plants now exceed $4 billion per year. Meanwhile, the war on other drugs has dramatically intensified. Since 1970, the federal drug budget has increased by 3,700 percent and now exceeds $17 billion. More than a million and a half people are arrested each year for drug trafficking, and 400,000 are currently in prison. These numbers are just a window into an obvious truth: We are taking more drugs and rewarding those who provide them. We are punishing more people who use drugs, and we are particularly punishing those who supply them. On the surface, there is no conflict... The drug wars and the drug boom are interdependent, belong to the same body. Hostility and reverence, punishment and profit come from the same beliefs and the same errors. The pharmaceutical industry is booming; the war on drugs is intensifying. Are these statistics unrelated or do they reveal a deeper insight into our society? What factors influence our moral perception of drugs? What differentiates good drugs from bad? In Shenk's words: "When does legal pain relief become an illegal pursuit of pleasure?" » To answer these surprisingly difficult questions, we must examine the drugs themselves: the origins of their legality and the reasons given for their moral status. This review will reveal faulty explanations for the above questions, explanations that have obscured a more pressing problem in ...... middle of paper ...... cide for people aged fifteen to twenty-four to triple since 1960 (no doubt this rise in depression fueled the need for more legal and illegal drugs)? Perhaps it is the discontent and frustration that lies behind the recent school massacres that continue to occur (psychiatrists with their arsenal of drugs flock to these places, ready to help the victims)? These are questions we must ask, and in this new line of inquiry we must not forget the insightful words of Shenk: But often we do not realize that the feeling is internal, perhaps something which, with an effort, could be experienced without medication or perhaps, as in the psychiatric equivalent of diabetes, for which we will always need help. Yet, too often, we project onto drugs a power that resides elsewhere. Many believe this is a lack of character. If this is the case, it is a failure in which the entire culture is involved..