While well over one million small-time drug users languish in overcrowded prisons because of nonviolent drug offenses, tens of thousands of others get rich from legal and illegal drugs. Drug company representatives persuade doctors to prescribe inferior products. Children as young as two are routinely given powerful drugs. Legal drugs, taken exactly as prescribed, are a leading cause of illness and death. Scientists beholden to drug companies fabricate and misrepresent data. This eye-opening book richly documents disturbing trends in Western medicine and urges readers toward a broader understanding of drug use and abuse. Leavitt shows how and why American society must change its medical and policy approaches to drugs and re-orient medical practice to new ways of thinking.