I seem to find myself acquiring a free day pass from Salon.com almost every day. The quality of their writing is generally superb, and Larry Smith’s “Blowing our minds” is no exception. Part book summary, part Q&A with the author, the article discusses “America’s complicated and schizophrenic history with drugs” with Martin Torgoff, author of Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000.

Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance says that the War on Drugs has been founded on myths, fears, exaggerations and lies. Can it be repaired?

Unfortunately, I don’t think it can in our lifetime. Drugs are still too polarized for people to look at them rationally. They need to be denuded of all of the cultural associations of the last 50 years. We really need to look at how people use them, abuse them, how they’ve changed the country, and what can be done. It may be that we have to wait until this generation that lived through the explosive time of the ’60s and ’70s — when drugs use went from a tiny fraction of the country to one in four — are dead to really look at this issue differently.

I haven’t read the book yet, but it is definitely on my “to read” list. Nick Gillespie of Reason gave it a luke warm review in the Washington Post, but the text nonetheless intrigues me.

As I was reading the Salon.com piece, I couldn’t help but remember two of the best books about drugs and drug culture that I’ve come across. If you haven’t read Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD or Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, they are highly recommended. Both provide interesting historical background and compelling character studies that really bring the so-called psychedelic revolution to life.