In our current digital era, imagination and the cultural and material conditions by which it is developed are more crucially than ever implicated in the experienced adversities and contradictions of drug use. The technological changes of society underscore the need for rethinking dominant understandings which portray addiction as an immediate and even mindless relation between a person and a substance or behavior, only minimally affected by subjective significance and historical alterations of everyday life. Indeed, from ancient mythology to our modern times drugs have been part of our cultural history. Understandings and practices of their uses have developed through cultural ideas and cultural-material conditions like traditions, rituals and routines. Today, the omnipresence of digital media in everyday life is massively changing and expanding such cultural and material conditions. Digital media equip people with associations between drugs and an incredible abundance of images, ideas, facts, fiction, narratives, plots, soundtracks, characters, and much more, and thereby expanding their imaginable potentials for providing answers to biographical questions. People and potential drug use become connected in novel and labyrinthine ways through digital communities and arrangements of everyday life. And digital media are part of and transform the cultural-material practices in which activities and experiences of intoxication actually take place. In the book, all these details are extensively analyzed empirically based on qualitative data on the lives of a number of young, Danish people who were undergoing treatment for drug-related problems at the time of the research. An underlying premise of the entire work is that addiction may be seen as a more extreme expression of how the technological developments in our contemporary world more generally speaking magnify the contradictory implications of imagination for modern living. Over the recent years, psychological research into the significance of the human capacity to imagine for how people deal with and live their lives has received growing attention. Yet, the complex involvement of imagination in actual living and consequently the theoretical cruxes this engenders continue to amaze and surprise research and researchers. This book also contributes to these theoretical ambitions with a substantial work on the concept of imagination. It primarily suggests that a critical discussion of how imagining is essentially a contradictory process in everyday life and how it is always grounded in the agency of material aspects, ranging anywhere from mundane artifacts over mediated content to advanced technologies, is ultimately what makes the scientific study of imagination relevant to understanding and intervening in the dilemmas and crises of modern life and society. The book will primarily interest scholars of social psychology of everyday life, scholars working conceptually and empirically on imagination, scholars of social studies of media, materiality and technology, and researchers or practitioners working with addictions.

Should we legalize marijuana? If we legalize, what in particular should be legal? Just possessing marijuana and growing your own? Selling and advertising? If selling becomes legal, who gets to sell? Corporations? Co-ops? The government? What regulations should apply? How high should taxes be? Different forms of legalization could bring very different results. This second edition of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know discusses what is happening with marijuana policy, describing both the risks and the benefits of using marijuana, without taking sides in the legalization debate. The book details the potential gains and losses from legalization, explores the middle ground options between prohibition and commercialized production, and considers the likely impacts of legal marijuana on occasional users, daily users, patients, parents, and employersand even on drug traffickers.

Stories from doctors, nurses, and therapists dealing on a daily basis with the opioid crisis in Appalachia should be heartbreaking. Yet those told here also inspire with practical advice on how to assist those in addiction, from a grass-roots to a policy level. Readers looking for ways to combat the crisis will find suggestions alongside laughter, tears, and sometimes rage. Each author brings the passion of their profession and the personal losses they have experienced from addiction, and posits solutions and harm reduction with positivity, grace, and even humor. Authors representing seven states from northern, Coalfields, and southern Appalachia relate personal encounters with patients or providers who changed them forever. This is a history document, showing how we got here; an evidenced indictment of current policies failing those who need them most; an affirmation that Appalachia solves its own problems; and a collection of suggestions for best practice moving forward.

Tobacco kills 5 million people every year and that number is expected to double by the year 2020. Despite its enormous toll on human health, tobacco has been largely neglected by anthropologists. Drinking Smoke combines an exhaustive search of historical materials on the introduction and spread of tobacco in the Pacific with extensive anthropological accounts of the ways Islanders have incorporated this substance into their lives. The author uses a relatively new concept called a syndemic-the synergistic interaction of two or more afflictions contributing to a greater burden of disease in a population-to focus at once on the health of a community, political and economic structures, and the wider physical and social environment and ultimately provide an in-depth analysis of smoking's negative health impact in Oceania. In Drinking Smoke the idea of a syndemic is applied to the current health crisis in the Pacific, where the number of deaths from coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease continues to rise, and the case is made that smoking tobacco in the form of industrially manufactured cigarettes is the keystone of the contemporary syndemic in Oceania. The author shows how tobacco consumption (particularly cigarette smoking after World War II) has become the central interstitial element of a syndemic that produces most of the morbidity and mortality Pacific Islanders suffer. This syndemic is made up of a bundle of diseases and conditions, a set of historical circumstances and events, and social and health inequities most easily summed up as "poverty". He calls this the tobacco syndemic and argues that smoking is the crucial behavior-the "glue"-holding all of these diseases and conditions together. Drinking Smoke is the first book-length examination of the damaging tobacco syndemic in a specific world region. It is a must-read for scholars and students of anthropology, Pacific studies, history, and economic globalization, as well as for public health practitioners and those working in allied health fields. More broadly the book will appeal to anyone concerned with disease interaction, the social context of disease production, and the full health consequences of the global promotional efforts of Big Tobacco.

It has become almost accepted knowledge within international policy circles that efforts against drug trafficking and drug abuse violate human rights, and that the entire international drug control regime needs to be changed (or even discarded altogether) to adopt a more 'rights respecting' approach. Though this view has been promoted by many prominent figures and organisations, the author of this book uses his expertise in both human rights and drug control to show that the arguments advanced in this area do not stand close scrutiny. The arguments are in fact based on selective and questionable interpretations of international human rights standards, and on a general notion - more and more clearly stated - that there is a human right to take drugs, and that any effort to combat drug abuse by definition violates this right. There is no such right in international law, and the author objects to the misuse of human rights language as a marketing tool to bring about a 'back door' legalisation of drugs. Human rights issues must be addressed, but that in no way means that the international drug control regime must be discarded, or that efforts against drugs must be stopped.

Critics of narcology-as addiction medicine is called in Russia-decry it as being "backward," hopelessly behind contemporary global medical practices in relation to addiction and substance abuse, and assume that its practitioners lack both professionalism and expertise. On the basis of his research in a range of clinical institutions managing substance abuse in St. Petersburg, Eugene Raikhel increasingly came to understand that these assumptions and critiques obscured more than they revealed. Governing Habits is an ethnography of extraordinary sensitivity and awareness that shows how therapeutic practice and expertise is expressed in the highly specific, yet rapidly transforming milieu of hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centers in post Soviet Russia. Rather than interpreting narcology as a Soviet survival or a local clinical world on the wane in the face of globalizing evidence-based medicine, Raikhel examines the transformation of the medical management of alcoholism in Russia over the past twenty years. Raikhel's book is more than a story about the treatment of alcoholism. It is also a gripping analysis of the many cultural, institutional, political, and social transformations taking place in the postSoviet world, particularly in Putin's Russia. Governing Habits will appeal to a wide range of readers, from medical anthropologists, clinicians, to scholars of post-Soviet Russia, to students of institutions and organizational change, to those interested in therapies and treatments of substance abuse, addiction, and alcoholism.

Although tobacco is a legal substance, many governments around the world have introduced legislation to restrict smoking and access to tobacco products. Smokefree critically examines these changes, from the increasing numbers of places being designated as 'smokefree' to changes in cigarette packaging and the portrayal of smoking in popular culture. Unlike existing texts, this book neither advances a public health agenda nor condemns the erosion of individual rights. Instead, Simone Dennis takes a classical anthropological approach to present the first agenda-free, full-length study of smoking. Observing and analysing smoking practices and environments, she investigates how the social, moral, political and legal atmosphere of 'smokefree' came into being and examines the ideas about smoke, air, the senses, space, and time which underlie it. Looking at the impact on public space and individuals, she reveals broader findings about the relationship between the state, agents, and what is seen to constitute 'the public'. Enriched with ethnographic vignettes from the author's ten years of fieldwork in Australia, Smokefree is a challenging, important book which demands to be read and discussed by anyone with an interest in anthropology, sociology, political science, human geography, and public health.

Current public health literature suggests that the mentally ill may represent as much as "half "of the smokers in America. In "Smoking Privileges," Laura D. Hirshbein highlights the complex problem of mentally ill smokers, placing it in the context of changes in psychiatry, in the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, and in the experience of mental illness over the last century.Hirshbein, a medical historian and clinical psychiatrist, first shows how cigarettes functioned in the old system of psychiatric care, revealing that mental health providers long ago noted the important role of cigarettes within treatment settings and the strong attachment of many mentally ill individuals to their cigarettes. Hirshbein also relates how, as the sale of cigarettes dwindled, the tobacco industry quietly researched alternative markets, including those who smoked for psychological reasons, ultimately discovering connections between mental states and smoking, and the addictive properties of nicotine. However, " Smoking Privileges" warns that to see smoking among the mentally ill only in terms of addiction misses how this behavior fits into the broader context of their lives. Cigarettes not only helped structure their relationships with other people, but also have been important objects of attachment. Indeed, even after psychiatric hospitals belatedly instituted smoking bans in the late twentieth century, smoking remained an integral part of life for many seriously ill patients, with implications not only for public health but for the ongoing treatment of psychiatric disorders. Making matters worse, well-meaning tobacco-control policies have had the unintended consequence of further stigmatizing the mentally ill.A groundbreaking look at a little-known public health problem, "Smoking Privileges" illuminates the intersection of smoking and mental illness, and offers a new perspective on public policy regarding cigarettes.

Can drugs be used intelligently and responsibly to expand human consciousness and heighten spirituality? This two-volume work presents objective scientific information and personal stories aiming to answer the question. The first of its kind, this intriguing two-volume set objectively reports on and assesses this modern psycho-social movement in world culture: the constructive medical use of entheogens and related mind-altering substances. Covering the use of substances such as ayahuasca, cannabis, LSD, peyote, and psilocybin, the work seeks to illuminate the topic in a scholarly and scientific fashion so as to lift the typical division between those who are supporters of research and exploration of entheogens and those who are strongly opposed to any such experimentation altogether. The volumes address the history and use of mind-altering drugs in medical research and religious practice in the endeavor to expand and heighten spirituality and the sense of the divine, providing unbiased coverage of the relevant arguments and controversies regarding the subject matter. Chapters include examinations of how psychoactive agents are used to achieve altered states in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism as well as in the rituals of shamanism and other less widely known faiths. This highly readable work will appeal to everyone from high school students to seasoned professors, in both the secular world and in devoted church groups and religious colleges. Includes coverage of a variety of drugs, most of which are currently illegal in the United States, accompanied by scientific explanations of how they spur spiritual experiences Offers compelling narratives from individuals-both laypeople and professionals-who found new dimensions within their lives and heightened their spirituality by the use of entheogens Supplies information about medical experiments and new treatment modes that provide definitive breakthrough methods for caring for suffering people

This book assists new and experienced scholars in planning and conducting high quality, contemporary studies for knowledge building about substance use. The target audience is individuals new to substance use as a field of study, either as novice researchers or as experienced researchers in other areas who find themselves lacking experience to address overlapping issues of substance use. Organized around a translational science framework, the contents address substance use research about epidemiology, etiology, intervention efficacy and effectiveness, and implementation of evidence-informed interventions. In addition, examples and issues are drawn from social work traditions involving multiple levels of study (organisms to large social systems), integrating biopsychosocial aspects, and adopting a lifespan perspective. The authors examine the implications for research of current "great debates" in the field and present readers with a variety of specific substance use research resources and tools. This practical "how to" guide takes the reader step-by-step through issues specific to substance use research in study design, participant recruitment and retention, measurement and analysis, and the processes involved in the dissemination, diffusion, and implementation of evidence-informed innovations. A variety of technical resources and measurement tools are provided, as are references to journals for scholars to consider both as knowledge resources and as outlets for disseminating their work. In sum, this book offers a fresh approach to conducting substance use research that is not readily available in other texts.

Since the late 1990s, marijuana grow operations have been identified by media and others as a new and dangerous criminal activity of "epidemic" proportions. With Killer Weed, Susan C. Boyd and Connie Carter use their analysis of fifteen years of newspaper coverage to show how consensus about the dangerous people and practices associated with marijuana cultivation was created and disseminated by numerous spokespeople including police, RCMP, and the media in Canada. The authors focus on the context of media reports in Canada to show how claims about marijuana cultivation have intensified the perception that this activity poses "significant" dangers to public safety and thus is an appropriate target for Canada's war on drugs. Boyd and Carter carefully show how the media draw on the same spokespeople to tell the same story again and again, and how a limited number of messages has led to an expanding anti-drug campaign that uses not only police, but BC Hydro and local municipalities to crack down on drug production. Going beyond the newspapers, Killer Weed examines how legal, political, and civil initiatives that have emerged from the media narrative have troubling consequences for a shrinking Canadian civil society.

Luigi Zoja argues that the pervasive abuse of drugs in our society can in large part be ascribed to a resurgence of the collective need for initiation and initiatory structures: a longing for something sacred underlies our culture's manic drive toward excessive consumption. In a society without ritual, the drug addict seeks not so much the thrill of a high as the satisfaction of an inner need for a participation mystique in the dominant religion of our times: consumerism.

Bringing anthropological perspectives to bear on addiction, the contributors to this important collection highlight the contingency of addiction as a category of human knowledge and experience. Based on ethnographic research conducted in sites from alcohol treatment clinics in Russia to Pentecostal addiction ministries in Puerto Rico, the essays are linked by the contributors' attention to the dynamics-including the cultural, scientific, legal, religious, personal, and social-that shape the meaning of "addiction" in particular settings. They examine how it is understood and experienced among professionals working in the criminal justice system of a rural West Virginia community; Hispano residents of New Mexico's Espanola Valley, where the rate of heroin overdose is among the highest in the United States; homeless women participating in an outpatient addiction therapy program in the Midwest; machine-gaming addicts in Las Vegas, and many others. The collection's editors suggest "addiction trajectories" as a useful rubric for analyzing the changing meanings of addiction across time, place, institutions, and individual lives. Pursuing three primary trajectories, the contributors show how addiction comes into being as an object of knowledge, a site of therapeutic intervention, and a source of subjective experience. Contributors. Nancy D. Campbell, E. Summerson Carr, Angela Garcia, William Garriott, Helena Hansen, Anne M. Lovell, Emily Martin, Todd Meyers, Eugene Raikhel, A. Jamie Saris, Natasha Dow Schull

This Provider's Guide introduces a comprehensive and developmentally appropriate treatment program, Pathways for Self-Discovery and Change (PSDC), which provides the specific tools necessary for improving evaluation and treatment of at-risk youth, a particularly vulnerable patient population in the justice system. Using an adolescent-focused format, this protocol identifies psychological, biological, and social factors that contribute to the onset of adolescent deviance, and establishes guidelines for delivery of a 32-session treatment curriculum designed to rehabilitate both male and female adolescents with co-occurring substance abuse and criminal conduct. Now in its Second Edition, this guide provides treatment practitioners, program evaluators, and youth services administrators with the most up to date, comprehensive, and accessible information for the treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile justice clients. It is built on theoretical and research advances in the treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile justice clients, as well as feedback over the past seven years from PSDC counselees, treatment providers, and program administrators. SAGE offers treatment and training programs for mental health providers that you can easily incorporate into your existing programs.

Substance misuse and its pervasive problems is a constant challenge for social work, health and related professionals today. With heightened political and policy emphasis on all aspects of substance misuse, it is paramount that professionals remain up-to-date on current issues and their responsibilities. Based on research and evidence, this book provides a sound basis for grounded and innovative practice. Leading international contributors outline holistic and specialist approaches to policy and practice, and highlight the shift in emphasis from immediate risk minimisation to long-term recovery, the importance of prevention and the pivotal role of workforce development. Issues surrounding work with children and families affected by substance misuse are explored, and ways of implementing new approaches revealed. The book also looks at the impact of the smoking ban in Scotland, and suggests ways to support tobacco use cessation. This book is essential reading for all front-line practitioners working with substance misusers, including social work, health professionals and counsellors.

America's current struggle with drug addiction is not the nation's first. In the mid-nineteenth century, opium-smoking was decried as a major social and public health problem, especially in the West. Although China faced its own epidemic of opium addiction, only a very small minority of Chinese immigrants in America were actually involved in the opium business. It was in Anglo communities that the use of opium soon spread and this growing use was deemed a threat to the nation's entrepreneurial spirit and to its growing importance as a world economic and military power. The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws examines how the spread of opium-smoking fueled racism and created demands for the removal of the Chinese from American life. This meticulously researched study of the nineteenth-century drug-abuse crisis reveals the ways moral crusaders liked their anti-opium rhetoric to already active demands for Chinese exclusion. Until this time, anti-Chinese propaganda had been dominated by protests against the economic and political impact of Chinese workers and the alleged role of Chinese women as prostitutes. The use of the drug by Anglos added another reason for demonizing Chinese immigrants. Ahmad describes the disparities between Anglo-American perceptions of Chinese immigrants and the somber realities of these people's lives, especially the role that opium-smoking came to play in the Anglo-American community, mostly among middle-and upper-class women. The book offers a brilliant analysis of the evolution of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, plus important insights into the social history of the nineteenth-century West, the culture of American Victorianism, and the rhetoric of racismin American politics.

This bestselling memoir from a seasoned New York City reporter is a vivid report of a journey to the edge of self-destruction (New York Times). As a child during the Depression and World War II, Pete Hamill learned early that drinking was an essential part of being a man, inseparable from the rituals of celebration, mourning, friendship, romance, and religion. Only later did he discover its ability to destroy any writer's most valuable tools: clarity, consciousness, memory. In A Drinking Life, Hamill explains how alcohol slowly became a part of his life, and how he ultimately left it behind. Along the way, he summons the mood of an America that is gone forever, with the bittersweet fondness of a lifelong New Yorker. Magnificent. A Drinking Life is about growing up and growing old, working and trying to work, within the culture of drink. --Boston Globe

On August 26, 1960, twenty-three-year-old Danish cyclist Knud Jensen, competing in that year's Rome Olympic Games, suddenly fell from his bike and fractured his skull. His death hours later led to rumors that performance-enhancing drugs were in his system. Though certainly not the first instance of doping in the Olympic Games, Jensen's death serves as the starting point for Thomas M. Hunt's thoroughly researched, chronological history of the modern relationship of doping to the Olympics. Utilizing concepts derived from international relations theory, diplomatic history, and administrative law, this work connects the issue to global political relations. During the Cold War, national governments had little reason to support effective anti-doping controls in the Olympics. Both the United States and the Soviet Union conceptualized power in sport as a means of impressing both friends and rivals abroad. The resulting medals race motivated nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain to allow drug regulatory powers to remain with private sport authorities. Given the costs involved in testing and the repercussions of drug scandals, these authorities tried to avoid the issue whenever possible. But toward the end of the Cold War, governments became more involved in the issue of testing. Having historically been a combined scientific, ethical, and political dilemma, obstacles to the elimination of doping in the Olympics are becoming less restrained by political inertia.

There is an urgent demand for treatment protocols designed specifically for women who abuse drugs, commit crimes, and receive treatment in correctional settings. Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment for Women in Correctional Settings answers the clamor by targeting the biological, psychological, and social roots of female substance abuse and crime. Designed as an adjunct to the Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment: Strategies for Self-Improvement and Change (SSC) curriculum, this provider's guide uses female-focused examples, exercises, role plays, and content enhancements that pinpoint women's treatment issues. Features and Benefits Increases the female focus of each session in the original SSC curriculum, a renowned and effective treatment model Assumes a strengths-based approach, which helps build support systems and motivate recovery for women Provides a broad perspective on psychological, social and biological issues and enhances treatment outcomes across a wide spectrum of agencies and treatment providers Intended Audience This adjunct provider's guide is essential to agencies, treatment centers, and practitioners working with women in the judicial system - offering female clients the best possible chance to get back on the road to recovery. This adjunct provider's guide is essential to agencies, treatment centers, and practitioners working with women in the judicial system - offering female clients the best possible chance to get back on the road to recovery. This volume provides an invaluable gender focus for: Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment Strategies for Responsible Living and Change The Participant's Workbook Second Edition Kenneth W. Wanberg and Harvey B. Milkman ISBN: 978-1-4129-0591-6 The Provider's Guide Second Edition Kenneth W. Wanberg and Harvey B. Milkman ISBN: 978-1-4129-0592-3

The long awaited Second Edition of Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment, Provider's Guide is finally here. Now treatment providers and substance abuse counselors can find a wealth of information on how to implement the Strategies for Self Improvement and Change (SSC) curriculum efficiently and effectively. Although the Second Edition workbook can be used alone, the Second Edition Provider's Guide was written to build upon the foundation of the First Edition and provide enhanced information and adjunct exercises to supplement session delivery. It was also designed to help providers realize the essential traits and skills necessary to help ensure client success. The Provider's Guide is divided into three critical sections. The first section presents the core strategies upon which the SSC curriculum is built. This includes a conceptual framework which is essentially the thread of the program. Chapters 2-6 provide the foundational strategies of the curriculum, including: developing a therapeutic relationship through motivational enhancement; essential traits of providers; emphasis of the counselor as educator; a presentation of the phases of learning and stages of change; an introduction to the cognitive-behavioral approach; and finally a discussion of preventing relapse and recidivism - two major treatment goals. Section II provides the specific methods, procedures, and skills for the implementation and delivery of the SSC treatment curriculum. This includes a chapter on the assessment protocol, which is critical in order to accurately assess the issues, problems and vulnerabilities of the client. Chapter 7 outlines the operational procedures, such as the essential skills of the provider and guidelines for reentry and the aftercare plan. Finally, Section III provides guidelines for the delivery of the SSC modules and the individual treatment sessions as well as the phase closure sessions. It also provides adjunct informat

This toolkit is designed to support practitioners in their work with families where parents misuse drugs and there are concerns about the children's welfare. While focusing on drugs, it covers a wider pattern of misuse, including alcohol. It contains: summaries of key messages for practitioners tools and tips to support effective practice training and development activities a wide range of practice examples The toolkit is written for the range of professionals involved with families including drug misusing parents.

Adolescent substance use can interfere with cognitive, emotional, and social development and may even affect later functioning in adult domains such as parenting and employment. The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) recognized that this problem does not arise anew in adolescence, but in fact has roots in childhood. CSAP identified four critical predictors from childhood for substance use that could be valuable targets for prevention of adolescent substance use: parental management of and involvement with the child, and the child's social competence, self-regulation, and school achievement. In this book, the editors bring together a body of intervention research into a practical guide that shows how seven selected prevention programs address these risk factors. After introducing the developmental and setting factors that affect risk for substance use, a general framework for translating this research into practice is provided. Chapters describing each intervention contain user-friendly explanations of the theoretical basis, intended population, methods and procedures, and critical implementation characteristics of each program and summarize how it was tested and shown to reduce risk for substance abuse. Illustrative case examples are woven throughout the text, showing the benefits gained from the approach. The book is organized to describe interventions that apply to participants at differing developmental periods. Chapters include programs for universal or general population and for high risk youth and families. The included chapters cover programs developed and tested for a variety of ethnic and cultural groups across varying locations.

In Overcoming Crystal Meth Addiction, one of the few books to address the topic for a general audience, Dr. Steven Lee, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in crystal meth addiction, offers a complete guide to the drug, its effects, and how to overcome it.

Based on extensive scientific and social research and drawing from his professional experience, he covers everything from the definition and history of crystal meth to the physical and psychological effects; from dealing with the addictive personality to helping a friend or family member cope with it.

He focuses on understanding rather than outright condemnation of the drug, and empathetically covers all of the crucial questions:

• What is crystal meth?
• How is it made?
• How does it affect the body?
• How do you know if you're addicted to it?
• How do you stop using it?
• What if you don't want to stop?
• If you are going to use CM anyway, how can you minimize the damage?
• What if you quit but slipped and used again?

This book explores the origins, history and organisation of the international system of narcotic drug control with a specific focus on heroin, cannabis and cocaine. It argues that the century-long quest to eliminate the production, trade in and use of narcotic drugs has been a profound failure. The statistics produced by the international and domestic narcotic drug control agencies point to a sustained expansion of the drug trade, despite the imposition of harsh criminal sanctions against those engaged, as producers, traffickers or consumers, in the narcotic drugs market. The roots of this major international policy failure are traced back to the outdated ideology of prohibition, which is shown to be counterproductive, utopian and a fundamentally inadequate basis for narcotic drug policy in the twenty-first century. Prohibition, championed by many US policy makers, has left the international community poorly positioned to confront those changes to the drug trade and drug markets that have resulted from globalisation. Moreover, prohibition based approaches are causing more harm than good, as is demonstrated through reference to issues such as HIV/AIDS, the environment, conflict, development and social justice. As the drug control system approaches its centenary, there are signs that the global consensus on narcotic drug prohibition is fracturing. Some European and South American states are pushing for a new approach based on regulation, decriminalisation and harm reduction. But those seeking to revise prohibition strategies faces entrenched resistance, primarily by the U.S. This important text argues that successive American governments have pursued a contradictory approach; acting decisively against the narcotic drug trade at home and abroad, while at the same time working with drug traffickers and producer states when it is in America's strategic interest. As a result, US policy approaches emerge as a decisive factor in accounting for the failure of prohibition.

Torgoff examines how America's fascination with the new frontiers of inner space and consciousness gave birth to a mass culture of recreational drug use. Features interviews with eyewitnesses to the drug revolution, including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Grace Slick, and many others.