About the Author

Since the 70s, Theo Villella has kept a hand in creative writing. While observing, commenting, and sometimes participating in the American drug culture, Theo has written hundreds of poems, short stories, essays, and journals. Often, he documented what he experienced, from pot to opioids and the Kratom he uses to manage chronic pain from injuries received in a severe car accident when he was 19. In this first book, "The War on Drugs", he tells his story.
In Part One of this book, Theo describes his journey from a 4th grader in a rural school in southwestern Pennsylvania to today. He is honest about struggles with depression that have disrupted his life, a theme that surfaces in some of the poems he includes throughout the book.

Access Media International, Inc.

Theo (Ted) Villlella is known for his creativity as the founder of Access Media International, Inc., an innovative learning design and development organization specializing in creating custom learning solutions for major corporations, including GM, Ford, Chrysler, and Yazaki.
With over 25 years of experience designing and developing instructor-led, online learning, and distance learning courses on an extensive range of topics, Ted has published hundreds of titles for several major corporations. Now he turns his hand to a different kind of writing, something far more provocative and vital.

Quotes on the subject of "The War On Drugs"

  • “The pejorative term ‘abuse’ used in connection with diseases of addiction has the adverse effect of increasing social stigma and personal shame, both of which are so often barriers to an individual’s decision to seek treatment.”
    ― Joe Biden 1942 ― present
  • “The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.”
    ― William F. Buckley Jr. 1925 ― 2008
  • “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use…”
    ― Jimmy Carter 1924 ― present
  • "The war on drugs has made government more powerful, citizens less free, and hasn't helped users or addicts."
    ― Victor Mitchell 1965 ― present
  • "We cannot continue doing the same thing and expect different results."
    ― Otto Perez Molina 1950 ― present
  • “The war on drugs is wrong, both tactically and morally. It assumes that people are too stupid, too reckless, and too irresponsible to decide whether and under what conditions to consume drugs. The war on drugs is bankrupt.”
    ― Larry Elder 1952 ― present