JUST DOPE

A tangled blend of advocacy and memoir regarding flawed drug policy.

“The war on drugs is bullshit,” writes defense attorney Margolin. “No matter how many antidrug laws policymakers enact, people will always find some way to alter their consciousness.” In the author’s case, the pressure to do that consciousness-altering came early on as the daughter of an attorney who represented Timothy Leary after he escaped from prison in 1970. Still, it wasn’t until the summer before she went to law school herself that she began to experiment with “hard” drugs, starting off with ecstasy and cocaine. “My only concession to experimentation in college,” she writes, “was smoking pot.” After passing the California bar, there was an instance where she was unable to enter a courthouse because she was holding a bag of cocaine. From here, the author delivers a welter of grievances having to do with a former spouse’s argument that her drug use was grounds to award him custody of their child and her father’s attempt to fire her from partnership in his law firm. Along the way, Margolin writes at length about the psychology of addiction and the death by overdose of actor River Phoenix. “The extent to which [his] relationship with drugs was kept secret,” writes the author, “was a reaction to the heavy judgment society places on drugs and drug users—a judgment that is even harsher when the user is a rich celebrity.” When not focused on her own travails, Margolin throws in the argument that drug abuse is likely a product of psychological abuse, which is “actually not your fault, as everyone passes down trauma.” While that idea is important and worthy of discussion, it accompanies awkward forays into PTSD, the Holocaust, racism, and other heady issues. A better book covering much of the same ground is Carl L. Hart’s Drug Use for Grown-Ups.

A tedious manifesto against prohibition.