The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act represented an innovative and sweeping change in how the United States dealt with drugs. It came about at a time when there was mounting alarm in this country over drugs and related social problems, particularly with the rate of crime. A major force was the fear that soldiers returning from the war in Vietnam, where heroin and other drugs were cheaply and readily available, would overwhelm American society with a massive wave of drug addiction. President Richard M. Nixon and other officials felt hampered in their self-declared “War on Drugs” by a complex patchwork of laws and enforcement and regulatory agencies. The act was a cornerstone in efforts to reorganize this policy quagmire into a uniform federal ...