Substance misuse of course extends beyond alcohol, and numerous studies examine addiction to drugs, efforts to eradicate their use and distribution, and the consequences of both. Useful volumes that focus on the science of addiction and how it informs policy include Caroline Jean Acker’s Creating the American Junkie, which explores how addiction research fueled public panic and bolstered strict policies of drug prohibition. Nancy D. Campbell has written two relevant volumes. Discovering Addiction presents a comprehensive history of addiction science and substance abuse research. Her volume OD, meanwhile, considers the politics surrounding overdose and the emergence of naloxone as a solution that can reverse an overdose.
For books focused on pharmaceuticals and amphetamines, readers may wish to peruse White Market Drugs, by David L. Herzberg, which provides a history of addiction to pharmaceuticals, laying the groundwork to better understand the current opioid crisis. There is also Leslie L. Iversen’s Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin for a more scientific understanding of these types of drugs, and Nicholas Rasmussen’s On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine. Other drug histories include Joseph F. Spillane’s Cocaine: From Medical Marvel to Modern Menace in the United States, 1884–1920; Eric C. Schneider’s Smack: Heroin and the American City; and Chris Elcock’s Psychedelic New York: A History of LSD in the City.
To understand policy efforts to prohibit drugs, a few volumes stand out. Kathleen Frydl’s The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973 traces the transition in government policy from regulation to prohibition, noting that despite the failure of the more militant war on drugs, this hardline policy reflects other issues of governance at play. David F. Musto and Pamela Korsmeyer’s The Quest for Drug Control documents the decision-making processes of different administrations from 1963 to 1981 and their rationale for increasingly strict drug control policies. Russell Crandall’s Drugs and Thugs offers a more recent assessment of the war on drugs and its consequences both at home and abroad.
For a different view on drugs and addiction, The Road of Excess, by Marcus Boon documents a history of writers’ use of different drugs, which he then links to specific literary and philosophical traditions.
