finished reading Overdose 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
Honest, well research and comprehensive. This book is almost the perfect material to get introduced to an evidence-based approach to "the war on drugs". That it was written by someone who was entirely embedded in conservative politics and grows a devout christian adds to the appeal to its universality.

The one flaw of the book, if it can even be called a fault instead of perhaps a missed opportunity, is the little discussion of the infertile grounds to sow the thesis, because this is one of the most important things we need right now to move forward with solutions. The current political climate is that of conservative leaders calling "empathy" weakness. A good chunk of the book is dedicated to dismantling the stigma, but this bias is a foundational character aspect of at least a third of us: rugged individualism cannot be argued out of someone's core values and principles. How do we even get people to read this book cover to cover without triggering "culture war" reflexes of dismissal? I have no idea, and I guess it's a different type of book that needs to address this.