The nationally syndicated columnist and Reason magazine editor presents a damning portrait of how politicized government agencies, antidrug activists, and a naïve national media have exaggerated the public's fears of the harmful effects of recreational drugs.

Jacob Sullum goes beyond the debate on legalization or the proper way to win the "war on drugs," to the heart of a social and individual defense of using drugs. Saying Yes argues that the all-or-nothing thinking that has long dominated discussions of illegal drug use should give way to a wiser, subtler approach exemplified by the tradition of moderate drinking. Saying Yes further contends that the conventional understanding of addiction, portraying it as a kind of chemical slavery in which the user's values and wishes do not matter, is also fundamentally misleading.