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Against Excess: Drug Policy For Results
Drug-taking and drug control are alike; both are often done to excess. "Against Excess" shows how we can limit the damage done by drugs and the damage done by drug policies. Mark Kleiman cuts through the rhetoric of the war on drugs and the legalization debate to discuss the practical options available for the control of the entire range of psychoactive substances, offering detailed prescriptions for managing alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, marijuana and heroin. "Against Excess" is organized around 3 why do some people who can manage the rest of their lives get into trouble with drugs; how do their problems harm their families and their communities; what can governments do about it? Kleiman argues that we need to develop a middle course between prohibition and complete legal a new category of "grudging toleration" that would apply to alcohol and to some of the currently prohibited drugs. He also argues that, as a practical matter, drug programs - enforcement, persuasion, and helping and controlling problem users - may be as important as the laws.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
496 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1992
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July 31, 2026
The late Mark Kleiman was one of the nation’s foremost experts on drug abuse. "Against Excess," his magnum opus, first came out in 1992 with a second edition in 2012.
A professor at UCLA for 19 years, Kleiman writes that the main obstacle to effective drug policy is the black-and-white mentality of most Americans, who consider drugs as either illegal and dangerous, or as legal and acceptable. This mentality leads to both too much prohibition and too little regulation of drugs that aren’t prohibited. Once drugs are legal, opposition arises from conservatives to “nanny state” regulations trying to coerce people for their own good.
It is better to recognize that recreational psychoactive drugs, when used to excess, create huge social costs. Rejecting the either-or fallacy of criminalization or commercial legalization, Kleiman proposes a third category of “grudgingly tolerated vices” (GTVs), in which he includes alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco.
He argues that GTVs need to be properly regulated, though not necessarily criminalized, to reduce the harm to public health and safety. In other words, we need a gray category instead of just black and white. That doesn’t mean every drug belongs in the gray category. Instead, the best mix of policies is needed for each drug.
The purpose of prudent drug policy, he contends, should be to curb the harm from both excessive use and dependence and from the costs and unwanted side effects of regulation. The value of any policy depends upon the relative sizes of its good and bad effects.
The most serious challenge for states repealing their laws criminalizing marijuana is how to do so without causing a long-term spike in use by minors and in substance abuse disorders – risks that advocates of legalization have been in denial about.
The relevant factors in the new laws affecting usage are pricing, marketing, product innovation and ease of access. The repeal of alcohol prohibition is instructive in this regard.
“The legalization of alcohol has been a failure,” Kleiman asserts, in not keeping the social costs of alcohol abuse at acceptable levels. The reality is that legalizing currently illicit drugs for adults “would mean effectively expanding access to it for adolescents.” Exhibit A is the accessibility of alcohol to minors.
The commercial legalization of marijuana will also lead to giant corporations who profit from ever greater consumption, and who would therefore lobby against effective regulations and taxes, just as the alcohol industry does. If commercial legalization turned into a disaster, it would nevertheless by virtually irreversible, since so many more users would exist.
Criminal law has limited effectiveness. Less formal means that don’t require a criminal conviction are essential to deterring drug buyers. Besides law enforcement, other tools in drug control are persuasion, treatment, taxes, mandated and monitored abstinence, such as with the ankle bracelet, personal use licenses, and routine testing.
In addition to challenging the War on Drugs, Kleiman challenged the status quo regarding alcohol policy. If alcohol were a newly developed drug, its intoxicating and addicting qualities would lead to its scheduling under the Controlled Substance Act – completely banned. “Daily use, considered one of the stigmata of dependency for any other intoxicant, is not unusual when the drug is alcohol.”
The huge social costs from alcohol consumption are underestimated because alcohol is legal. Those costs include widespread underage drinking, alcoholism for one in ten drinkers, alcohol-related crime, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (which are commonly underdiagnosed), accidents, suicide, cirrhosis, and higher risk of cancer. To better control those costs, the country needs to treat alcohol as a part of the drug problem, and to embrace a better set of taxes, regulations and programs.
There are two obstacles to adopting more effective alcohol controls: public resistance to viewing alcohol as part of the drug problem, and opposition from the powerful alcohol industry, which, for example, fights tooth and nail every attempt to lower the legal limit for DUI or to raise taxes.
Low price is one cause of the teen drinking problem since beer is as cheap, if not cheaper, than bottled water. Teens are more price sensitive than adults, so raising taxes is a cost-effective way to curb underage drinking.
Readers will find a wealth of insights and one memorable turn of phrase after another. Here is a sampling:
• “In the struggle within a recovering problem drinker between the drunkard and the sober person, the liquor merchants are allowed to side with the drunkard.”
• “That the ban on selling alcohol actually reduced the volume of alcohol consumed is not open to serious debate."
• “If the current cocaine situation demonstrates the social damage that can accrue from an incompletely successful attempt to control a problem drug by prohibition, the current alcohol situation shows the costs of an incompletely successful attempt to control a problem drug without prohibiting it, using regulations, taxes and programs.”
• Hiking taxes on tobacco by a buck a pack “offers the single greatest opportunity for reducing the toll drug taking takes on American life.”
Kleiman offers thoughtful analysis and evaluation of drug policies. He makes a cogent case for reforming alcohol policy to better curb the social costs of consumption, and to design marijuana laws to avoid the pitfalls that came after repealing alcohol Prohibition.
Unfortunately, his warnings against commercial legalization of cannabis, like alcohol, were ignored. The consequence is a rapid growth in cannabis use and in its inevitable social costs. -30-
A professor at UCLA for 19 years, Kleiman writes that the main obstacle to effective drug policy is the black-and-white mentality of most Americans, who consider drugs as either illegal and dangerous, or as legal and acceptable. This mentality leads to both too much prohibition and too little regulation of drugs that aren’t prohibited. Once drugs are legal, opposition arises from conservatives to “nanny state” regulations trying to coerce people for their own good.
It is better to recognize that recreational psychoactive drugs, when used to excess, create huge social costs. Rejecting the either-or fallacy of criminalization or commercial legalization, Kleiman proposes a third category of “grudgingly tolerated vices” (GTVs), in which he includes alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco.
He argues that GTVs need to be properly regulated, though not necessarily criminalized, to reduce the harm to public health and safety. In other words, we need a gray category instead of just black and white. That doesn’t mean every drug belongs in the gray category. Instead, the best mix of policies is needed for each drug.
The purpose of prudent drug policy, he contends, should be to curb the harm from both excessive use and dependence and from the costs and unwanted side effects of regulation. The value of any policy depends upon the relative sizes of its good and bad effects.
The most serious challenge for states repealing their laws criminalizing marijuana is how to do so without causing a long-term spike in use by minors and in substance abuse disorders – risks that advocates of legalization have been in denial about.
The relevant factors in the new laws affecting usage are pricing, marketing, product innovation and ease of access. The repeal of alcohol prohibition is instructive in this regard.
“The legalization of alcohol has been a failure,” Kleiman asserts, in not keeping the social costs of alcohol abuse at acceptable levels. The reality is that legalizing currently illicit drugs for adults “would mean effectively expanding access to it for adolescents.” Exhibit A is the accessibility of alcohol to minors.
The commercial legalization of marijuana will also lead to giant corporations who profit from ever greater consumption, and who would therefore lobby against effective regulations and taxes, just as the alcohol industry does. If commercial legalization turned into a disaster, it would nevertheless by virtually irreversible, since so many more users would exist.
Criminal law has limited effectiveness. Less formal means that don’t require a criminal conviction are essential to deterring drug buyers. Besides law enforcement, other tools in drug control are persuasion, treatment, taxes, mandated and monitored abstinence, such as with the ankle bracelet, personal use licenses, and routine testing.
In addition to challenging the War on Drugs, Kleiman challenged the status quo regarding alcohol policy. If alcohol were a newly developed drug, its intoxicating and addicting qualities would lead to its scheduling under the Controlled Substance Act – completely banned. “Daily use, considered one of the stigmata of dependency for any other intoxicant, is not unusual when the drug is alcohol.”
The huge social costs from alcohol consumption are underestimated because alcohol is legal. Those costs include widespread underage drinking, alcoholism for one in ten drinkers, alcohol-related crime, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (which are commonly underdiagnosed), accidents, suicide, cirrhosis, and higher risk of cancer. To better control those costs, the country needs to treat alcohol as a part of the drug problem, and to embrace a better set of taxes, regulations and programs.
There are two obstacles to adopting more effective alcohol controls: public resistance to viewing alcohol as part of the drug problem, and opposition from the powerful alcohol industry, which, for example, fights tooth and nail every attempt to lower the legal limit for DUI or to raise taxes.
Low price is one cause of the teen drinking problem since beer is as cheap, if not cheaper, than bottled water. Teens are more price sensitive than adults, so raising taxes is a cost-effective way to curb underage drinking.
Readers will find a wealth of insights and one memorable turn of phrase after another. Here is a sampling:
• “In the struggle within a recovering problem drinker between the drunkard and the sober person, the liquor merchants are allowed to side with the drunkard.”
• “That the ban on selling alcohol actually reduced the volume of alcohol consumed is not open to serious debate."
• “If the current cocaine situation demonstrates the social damage that can accrue from an incompletely successful attempt to control a problem drug by prohibition, the current alcohol situation shows the costs of an incompletely successful attempt to control a problem drug without prohibiting it, using regulations, taxes and programs.”
• Hiking taxes on tobacco by a buck a pack “offers the single greatest opportunity for reducing the toll drug taking takes on American life.”
Kleiman offers thoughtful analysis and evaluation of drug policies. He makes a cogent case for reforming alcohol policy to better curb the social costs of consumption, and to design marijuana laws to avoid the pitfalls that came after repealing alcohol Prohibition.
Unfortunately, his warnings against commercial legalization of cannabis, like alcohol, were ignored. The consequence is a rapid growth in cannabis use and in its inevitable social costs. -30-
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