On Avoiding Folly

Abstract

Inability to acknowledge the failure of the War On Drugs and repeated escalations of the war in spite of clear evidence of futility are analyzed front the perspective of research in cognitive and social psychology. Research into individual and group processes that foster flawed decisions and persistence in doomed ventures is presented to help explain how current drug policy developed and to warn reformers that they too could become trapped in inflexible, unworkable approaches to drug problems.