Drugs and Culture

Geoffrey Hunt is Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis, USA Maitena Milhet is a researcher at the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) Henri Bergeron is Research Fellow and Scientific Coordinator of the Chair in Health Studies at Sciences Po, Paris and Research Fellow (Permanent post - First Class) at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CSO), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

• Drugs and Culture; I: Knowledge: Science, Medicine, and Discourses on Drugs; 1: Social Fear, Drug-Related Beliefs, and Drug Policy; 2: Blinding Ourselves With Science: The Chronic Infections of Our Thinking on Psychoactive Substances; 3: Epidemiology as a Model: Processing Data through a Black Box?; 4: Opiate Addiction: A Revival of Medical Involvement; 5: This is Not Medicalization; 6: Drugs: A Sociological Blind Spot? A Look at the French Experience 1; II: Consumption: Cultures of Drug Use; 7: Drug Consumption: A Social Ritual? The Examples of Tobacco and Cocaine; 8: Dance Drug Scenes: A Global Perspective 1; 9: Contemporary Use of Natural Hallucinogens: From Techno Subcultures to Mainstream Values; 10: Ecstasy, Gender, and Accountability in a Rave Culture 1; 11: Drug Use in Europe: Specific National Characteristics or Shared Models?; III: Policy or Politics? The Cultural Dynamics of Public Responses; 12: Modernity and Anti-Modernity: Drug Policy and Political Culture in the United States and Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; 13: Assessing Global Drug Problems, Policies, and Reform Proposals; 14: Homelessness, Addiction, and Politically Structured Suffering in the US War on Drugs 1; 15: Knowledge and Policies to Reduce Drug Supply in France: Some Misunderstandings; 16: The Culture of Drug Policy

'A welcome and refreshing alternative to dominant orthodoxies with their narrow focus on "risks" and "problems". Wide-ranging, insightful chapters from distinguished scholars open the mind to challenging perspectives, informed by humanities and social science research. These critiques call for better balanced, more realistic and compassionate policies.' Susanne MacGregor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK 'Within drug war discourse, magical powers of "addiction" or "highjacking the brain" are attributed to psychoactive substances, and "drug use" tends to get interpreted as psychopathology or crime. Most drug use is neither, as the eminent scholars in this insightful collection show by bringing culture, meaning, and human practices back into the picture.' Craig Reinarman, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA ’...the well-written chapters and the variety of subjects and methods in this section and in the entire book offer some new and inventive views on aspects of drug use... Overall, the book is clearly aimed at researchers, adding to the existing body of knowledge and stimulating scholars to be critical about both processes and methods.’ Drugs and Alcohol Today