Will Self at The Guardian:
There are two key problems with books that attempt to be objective about illegal drugs. The first is that for the most part their authors won’t admit to having used such substances for fear their own objectivity may be compromised. The second follows fairly logically from the first: who, precisely, are such books aimed at? If they are targeted at readers who already have a consuming interest in drugs (pun intended), then they are very likely – by definition – to know rather more about the subject than the author; and if they are for people who only have a tangential interest in the subject, why should they want to read about it at all? True, there may be such a thing as a “gateway” book about drugs that leads people deeper and deeper into compulsive reading about the subject, but I suspect neither of these titles will fulfil that role, no matter how vulnerable the reader is to literary addiction.
Antony Loewenstein never explicitly says that he hasn’t used drugs in Pills, Powder and Smoke, but nor does he ever indicate that he has.
more here.