In the May 1999 issue of Harper's Magazine, Joshua Wolf Shenk's article "America's Altered States: When Does Legal Pain Relief Become Illegal Pleasure Seeking? " states: From 1970 to 1998, the inflation-adjusted revenues of major pharmaceutical companies more than quadrupled to $81 billion, 24 percent of which came from drugs that affect the central nervous system and sense organs. Sales of herbal medicines now exceed $4 billion annually. Meanwhile, the war on other drugs has intensified dramatically. Since 1970, the federal antidrug budget has increased 3,700 percent and now exceeds $17 billion. Every year more than 1.5 million people are arrested on drug charges and 400,000 are currently in prison. These numbers are just a window into an obvious truth: We take more drugs and reward those who provide them. We punish more people who take drugs and we especially punish those who supply them. On the surface there is no conflict... The drug wars and the drug boom are related, they belong to the same body. Hostility and veneration, punishment and profits, arise from the same beliefs and errors. The pharmaceutical industry is booming; the war on drugs is escalating. Are these statistics disconnected or do they reveal a deeper insight into our society? What factors influence our moral perception of drugs? What distinguishes good drugs from bad ones? In Shenk's words, "When does the legal relief of pain become the illegal pursuit of pleasure?" To answer these surprisingly difficult questions, we must examine the drugs themselves: the origins of their legality and the reasons given for their moral status. This examination will reveal some misleading explanations to the questions above, explanations that have obscured a more pressing problem in... half of the paper... the suicide of fifteen to twenty-four year olds, up to three times as many as in 1960 (undoubtedly this increase in depression has fueled the need for more legal and illegal drugs)? Perhaps it is the discontent and frustration behind the recent school massacres that continue to occur (psychiatrists with their arsenal of drugs flock to these scenes ready to help the victims)? These are questions we must ask ourselves, and in this new line of inquiry we must not forget Shenk's penetrating words: But we often don't realize that the feeling is within, perhaps something that, with effort, could be experienced without drugs or perhaps , as in the psychiatric equivalent of diabetes, something we will always need help with. Yet too often we project onto drugs a power that resides elsewhere. Many believe this is a failure of character. If so, it is a failure in which the entire culture is implicated.