Aesthetic factors influence attitudes toward drug policy, and symbolic meanings are attached to the imagery of drugs. Thus, the war on drugs is a war about emotional imagery and contested symbols, particularly the idea of the boundary, a matter crucial to the metaphysics and social organization of Western society. At the same time, the failure to recognize that we are dealing with the symbolic realm hampers both drug users and legislative policy, because in many ways discussion of the drug problem is not discussion about drugs at all. The reification of symbols both causes and perpetuates the problems that are intended to be solved. The fetishization of the objects of drug use makes the law and the drug addict far more alike than often thought. 51 references (Author abstract modified)