Another go at the drug question--this time by looking, with a close student of the

matter, at what has actually resulted in places that have, in different ways, liberalized

their drugs laws. The city of Amsterdam, as Mr. Kinsley reminds us, had decriminalized

possession of marijuana; Britain had a policy (partly abandoned) of giving maintenance

doses of heroin to registered addicts. Mr. Gazzaniga has the facts at his finger tips and

gives us a detail-filled counterpoint to the recent Firing Line debate on drugs (#FLS107):

"You have to remember the magnitude of the problem was slight [in Britain] compared to

the United States. In 1968 there were only 2,000 [heroin] addicts in all of the UK, while

probably in New York at that time there were 150,000. So right away when you go to

use these cross-cultural comparisons, you have to be very careful."