Lawyer Makes Case For Legalization of Drugs in New Novel

Chron.com

The ringleader of one of the nation's most notorious drug
cartels is a media celebrity as he stands trial for his
crimes - unaware there's a contract out on his head.

A junkie, suspected of aiding in the rape and murder of
her own daughter, all in exchange for a fix, is despised
and ridiculed in the media.

A Senator risks his political career fighting for a bill
that would legalize all drugs, believing that the key to
winning the drug war is the elimination of
illegal trafficking.

New York - These stories are presented as fiction in John Nicholas Iannuzzi's Condemned, but the issues they represent are a daily reality in the war against drugs. Iannuzzi's ripped-from-the-headlines style comes from his experience as one of New York City's most prominent criminal attorneys. With unflinching candor, Iannuzzi exposes the rampant corruption and unscrupulous behavior at every level of the drug trade - from street junkies to DEA agents - and reveals to readers the tangled web of interdependence illegal drug trafficking creates.

"We are repeating what Franklin Roosevelt called the Stupendous Blunder of Prohibition," says Iannuzzi. "Laws that were intended to regulate and eliminate allegedly evil substances have actually created an industry of corruption and violence."

In Condemned, Iannuzzi asserts that by failing to legalize drugs, our government is following the same mistaken path it did with alcohol Prohibition. In fact, he took the title of the book from a well-known quote from Santayana: "Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it." By legalizing and regulating drugs in the same way that alcohol has been controlled, Iannuzzi contends that society will have a three-fold benefit: eliminating trafficking and its cohorts violence and corruption, bringing in billions of legitimate tax dollars into the public coffers to better serve society, and eradicating the incalculable cost of fighting the ineffective "war on drugs." Once trafficking is eliminated, addiction can be dealt with as the medical and psychological problem that it is.

Iannuzzi's novel weaves together stories of Colombian drug lords, Russian thugs, Mafia soldiers, street junkies, law enforcement, courtroom intrigue, jail cells, luxury cars, and billions of dollars to shine a high-intensity light upon the dark, dangerous corners of international drug trafficking.