Drug prohibition emerged at the same time as the discovery of film, and their histories intersect in interesting ways. This book examines the ideological assumptions embedded in the narrative and imagery of one hundred fictional drug films produced in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. from 1912 to 2006, including Broken Blossoms, Reefer Madness, The Trip, Superfly, Withnail and I, Traffik, Traffic, Layer Cake, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Trailer Park Boys, and more. Boyd focuses on past and contemporary illegal drug discourse about users, traffickers, drug treatment, and the intersection of criminal justice with counterculture, alternative, and stoner flicks. She provides a socio-historical and cultural criminological perspective, and an analysis of race, class and gender representations in illegal drug films. This illuminating work will be an essential text for a wide range of students and scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, media, gender and women's studies, drug studies, and cultural studies.

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.

In More Harm Than Good, Carter, Boyd and MacPherson take a critical look at the current state of Canadian drug policy and raise key questions about the effects of Canada s increasing involvement in and commitment to the war on drugs. A primer on Canadian drug policy, the analysis in More Harm Than Good is shaped by critical sociology and feminist perspectives on drugs and incorporates insights not only from individuals who are on the front lines of drug policy in Canada treatment and service workers but also from those who live with the consequences of that policy on a daily basis people who use criminalized drugs. Finally, the authors propose realistic alternatives to today s failed policy approach. "

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.