The United States has experienced a number of drug wars. On the national scale these have involved the anti-opiate drive following the enactment of the Harrison Act in 1914, the anti- marijuana campaign in the mid and late-1930s, highly punitive Federal legislation of the 1950s, the Nixon drug war of the 1970s, and the 1986 War on Drugs together with its spin-offs in the 1988 U.S. presidential election season and in Canada. In contrast, the lone drug policy reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s included the decriminalization of possession of marijuana for personal use in a number of States. As an offshoot of the 1986 War on Drugs, however, several of these laws were eventually eliminated. A review of these anti-drug campaigns in the United States shows several common themes. First, on the national level, all of the drug wars were initiated by state agents or politicians who constructed the problem and then legitimized it to the public. Second, the media has been used to pass legitimating messages to the public, in many cases sensationalizing and magnifying "drug crisis" themes. Third, institutional racism has permeated the focus on criminalizing drug use. Fourth, illegal drug use has been used by politicians as a scapegoat for the causes of other public problems. The history of the criminal-justice-oriented approach to drug use in the United States has been influential in setting a punitive, prohibitionist tone rather than a rehabilitative or public health direction for global drug policy. Given that the United States' war strategy has failed, voices that advocate alternative solutions to drug-related problems have become increasingly louder, with the harm-reduction movement being particularly influential. 1 table