Why We Say Yes to Drugs
--by Laura Miller for Salon.com

One of the theses of his new book, "This is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America" -- a cornucopia of unconventional wisdom about our relationship to mind-altering substances -- is that the popularity of drugs waxes and wanes according to a complex sum of factors. One of those factors is the "perceived risk" of using a particular chemical, which also fluctuates. >>Full Review

Drug Sense: Drug Law Reform
-- by Stephen Young for DrugSense.org

Ryan Grim's new book starts with a quest to determine why the LSD supply seemingly vanished in the United States during the early part of this millennium. The pursuit of that question allows Grim to weave an engaging narrative thread through this unconventional account of the U.S. drug war. Though it is relatively short, the book lives up to its subtitle: "The Secret History of Getting High in America." >>Full Review

Sterling on Justice and Drugs Review
-- by Eric Sterling for Sterling on Justice and Drugs

One of Grim's outstanding contributions is the clearer illumination of the long-standing pattern of substitution of drugs. This, of course, is not a new point. It was widely remarked upon as an unintended consequence in 1969 of President Nixon's Operation Intercept that nearly shut the border with Mexico for 10 days in September. Substitutes for Mexican marijuana were the consequence. >>Full Review

The Elephant in the Room
-- by Jill Richardson for La Vida Locavore

My experience with our country's drug policy (and I expect yours too) is like the story of the blind men touching the elephant. Each man touched a different part of the elephant, and when asked to describe it, one described the elephant's side, one described its tail, others described its ears or its trunk, but none of them were able to understand or describe the entire elephant. Ryan Grim's new book This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America is the tool you need to understand the entire elephant of America's drug history and its drug policy. >>Full Review

Shelf Talk
-- by Debra Ginsberg for Shelf Awareness

After a lively chapter explaining the disappearance of LSD (Jerry Garcia died and with him Grateful Dead shows, which were the main stages for acid-taking and exchange; and in 2000, William Leonard Pickard, the nation's main producer, was busted and sent to prison, where he remains), Grim launches into a far-reaching look at the history and prominence of drugs in American culture. He offers indisputable evidence that Americans have eagerly consumed all manner of drugs since the country's inception and that for almost as long, Big Pharma has dictated their sale, legality, consumption and availability. One priceless example is Bayer Heroin, the "non-addictive" morphine substitute perfect for children and anything that ails you, introduced around 1900. Oops. Another: Benzedrine "pep pills" for energy, Dexedrine pills for women to lose weight and Ritalin for attention problems. >>Full Review

Just Say Know
-- by Gerry Donaghy for Powell's Books

Huffington Post correspondent Ryan Grim's book, This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, explores the myriad of disconnects that inhabit our conventional wisdom when it comes to drug use and drug policy. Why is it, for example that in order to receive the mandatory minimum jail sentence for powder cocaine you must possess 500 grams, whereas for crack cocaine the amount is only 5 grams? >>Full Review

The Moment: You can't find your stash
-- by Isaiah Thompson for Philadelphia City Paper

In college, Ryan Grim tried to answer a question that had nagged at him for years: Where did all the acid go? LSD, which in the mid- to late '90s had seemed plentiful in his Maryland hometown, had vanished. No one he knew did acid anymore, and no one knew where to get it. With the help of a professor, Grim began poring over federal drug use statistics and discovered something rather startling: In the span of just a few years, acid had gone from abundance to near-extinction in the United States. >>Full Review