Download or read book The Taming of Cocaine written by Tom Decorte and published by ASP Editions. This book was released on 2000 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in the Antwerp club scene and repeated in-depth interviews with 111 experienced cocaine users, the overall theme of the book is the genesis and the development of informal control mechanisms (social sanctions and rituals) among these illegal drug users. The Belgian data are compared consistently to the findings of other comparable community studies in European and American cities--Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Turin, San Francisco, Toronto--and in Scotland and Australia.

Download or read book Taming Cannabis written by David A. Guba Jr and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite having the highest rates of cannabis use in the continent, France enforces the most repressive laws against the drug in all of Europe. Perhaps surprisingly, France was once the epicentre of a global movement to medicalize cannabis, specifically hashish, in the treatment of disease. In Taming Cannabis David Guba examines how nineteenth-century French authorities routinely blamed hashish consumption, especially among Muslim North Africans, for behaviour deemed violent and threatening to the social order. This association of hashish with violence became the primary impetus for French pharmacists and physicians to tame the drug and deploy it in the homeopathic treatment of mental illness and epidemic disease during the 1830s and 1840s. Initially heralded as a wonder drug capable of curing insanity, cholera, and the plague, hashish was deemed ineffective against these diseases and fell out of repute by the middle 1850s. The association between hashish and Muslim violence, however, remained and became codified in French colonial medicine and law by the 1860s: authorities framed hashish as a significant cause of mental illness, violence, and anti-state resistance among indigenous Algerians. As the French government looks to reform the nation's drug laws to address the rise in drug-related incarceration and the growing popular demand for cannabis legalization, Taming Cannabis provides a timely and fascinating exploration of the largely untold and living history of cannabis in colonial France.

Download or read book Drugs and Culture written by Geoffrey Hunt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current approaches to drugs tend to be determined by medical and criminal visions that emerged over a century ago; the concepts of addiction, on the one hand, and drug control on the other, having imposed themselves as the unquestionable central notions surrounding drug issues and discourses. Pathologization and criminalization are the dominant perspectives on psychoactive drugs, and it is difficult to describe drug consumption in any terms other than those of medicine, or to conceive of regulation except in terms of control and eradication. Drugs and Culture presents other voices and understandings of drug issues, highlighting the socio-cultural features of drug use and regulation in modern societies. It examines the cultural dimensions of drugs and their regulation, with special attention to questions of how consumption of specific psychoactive substances becomes associated with particular social groups; the social dynamics involved in our coming to think of these phenomena as we do; and the factors that determine the political and policy responses to drug use. Adopting approaches from anthropology, sociology, history, political science and geopolitics to challenge the prevailing pathologization and criminalization of drug use, this book provides international and comparative perspectives on drug research, based on the latest research in Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Hong Kong.

Download or read book The Politics of Cocaine written by William L. Marcy and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on declassified documents and extensive firsthand research, The Politics of Cocaine takes a hard look at the role the United States played in creating the drug industry that thrives in Central and South America. Author William L. Marcy contends that by conflating anti-Communist and counternarcotics policies, the United States helped establish and strengthen the drug trade as the area's economic base. Increased militarization, destabilization of governments, uncontrollable drug trafficking, more violence, and higher death tolls resulted. Marcy explores how the counternarcotics policies of the 1970s collapsed during the 1980s when economic calamity, Andean guerrilla insurgencies, and Reagan's anti-Communist struggle with Nicaragua and Cuba became conflated as part of the War on Drugs. The book then explores how the U.S. invasion of Panama and narcotics related violence throughout Andean region during the 1990s led to the militarization of the War on Drugs as a way to confront narcotics production, narco-traffickers, and narco-guerrillas alike. Marcy brings to the reader up to the end of the George W. Bush administration and explains why to this date the United States remains unable to control the flow of cocaine into the United States and why the War on Drugs appears to be spiraling out of control. The Politics of Cocaine fills in historical gaps and provides a new and controversial analysis of a complex and seemingly unsolvable problem.

Download or read book Drugs as Weapons Against Us written by John L. Potash and published by Trine Day. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drugs as Weapons Against Us meticulously details how a group of opium-trafficking families came to form an American oligarchy and eventually achieved global dominance. This oligarchy helped fund the Nazi regime and then saved thousands of Nazis to work with the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA operations such as MK-Ultra pushed LSD and other drugs on leftist leaders and left-leaning populations at home and abroad. Evidence supports that this oligarchy further led the United States into its longest-running wars in the ideal areas for opium crops, while also massively funding wars in areas of coca plant abundance for cocaine production under the guise of a &“war on drugs&” that is actually the use of drugs as a war on us. Drugs as Weapons Against Us tells how scores of undercover U.S. Intelligence agents used drugs in the targeting of leftist leaders from SDS to the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Latin Kings, and the Occupy Movement. It also tells how they particularly targeted leftist musicians, including John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Tupac Shakur to promote drugs while later murdering them when they started sobering up and taking on more leftist activism. The book further uncovers the evidence that Intelligence agents dosed Paul Robeson with LSD, gave Mick Jagger his first hit of acid, hooked Janis Joplin on amphetamines, as well as manipulating Elvis Presley, Eminem, the Wu Tang Clan, and others.

Download or read book The Role of Community Mindedness in the Self Regulation of Drug Cultures written by Anke Stallwitz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes heroin users and the drug subculture on the Shetland Islands, an area known for its geographical remoteness, rural character and relative wealth. It fills the scientific gap created by the conventional research in heroin research, which is usually conducted in urban areas and relies on treatment and prison populations. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with twenty-four heroin users, this book depicts and analyzes the nature and historical development of the local heroin scene. It illustrates the features and internal structures of the subculture, and it examines the manner in which both are influenced by the location-specific geographical, cultural and socio-economic conditions. It thus reveals complex causal associations that are hard to recognize in urban environments. Complete with a list of references used and recommendations for future research, this book is a vital tool for progressive and pragmatic approaches to policy, intervention and research in the field of illicit drug use.

Download or read book Addiction and Performance written by James Reynolds and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addiction and Performance is a collection of essays offering a multidisciplinary exploration of the intertwined relationships between addiction, culture and performance. The problem of addiction is multifaceted, but existing approaches to it often emerge from the frameworks of single disciplines, foregrounding therapeutic or perhaps physiological perspectives over and above a combined approach. However, addictions are not formed or sustained in a vacuum, but are blended with and supported by a wide range of factors. Moreover, the role of culture both in understanding addiction and offering useful strategies of recovery has often been dismissed. In this book, James Reynolds and Zoe Zontou have gathered together leading practitioners and academics in order to explore addiction and performance, and to trouble, theorise, and describe specific ways of approaching their many relationships. This volume consequently offers an alternative conversation, bringing together a variety of discourses to generate a more politicised conceptualisation of addiction, one that facilitates a more complex understanding of addiction and performance, and their many facets. Addiction and Performance is a new and significant resource for students, artists, cultural organisations, service providers, academic researchers and therapeutic professionals working in the field of addiction.

Download or read book The Andean Cocaine Industry written by P. Clawson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonly known that the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the international centers of cocaine production. But until now, there has been no comprehensive view of this billion dollar industry. Using never-before unearthed information culled from their extensive field research, Patrick Clawson and Rensselaer Lee reveal the configuration of the drug industry, from the original cultivation of coca in the fields of South America to the sale of cocaine on the streets of the United States. The authors analyze the economic and political impact of the drug business on the Andean nations, including such problems as violence and the undermining of legitimate business. Through the ground-breaking work of Clawson and Lee, The Andean Cocaine Industry illuminates one of the most pervasive problems facing the world today.

Download or read book Andean Cocaine written by Paul Gootenberg and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminating a hidden and fascinating chapter in the history of globalization, Paul Gootenberg chronicles the rise of one of the most spectacular and now illegal Latin American exports: cocaine. Gootenberg traces cocaine's history from its origins as a medical commodity in the nineteenth century to its repression during the early twentieth century and its dramatic reemergence as an illicit good after World War II. Connecting the story of the drug's transformations is a host of people, products, and processes: Sigmund Freud, Coca-Cola, and Pablo Escobar all make appearances, exemplifying the global influences that have shaped the history of cocaine. But Gootenberg decenters the familiar story to uncover the roles played by hitherto obscure but vital Andean actors as well--for example, the Peruvian pharmacist who developed the techniques for refining cocaine on an industrial scale and the creators of the original drug-smuggling networks that decades later would be taken over by Colombian traffickers. Andean Cocaine proves indispensable to understanding one of the most vexing social dilemmas of the late twentieth-century Americas: the American cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and, in its wake, the seemingly endless U.S. drug war in the Andes.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Narcotics written by Julia Buxton and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Taking Care of Business written by Matthew Bacon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-08 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking Care of Business: Police Detectives, Drug Law Enforcement and Proactive Investigation offers a rich and insightful empirical study of drug investigations, based on extensive fieldwork undertaken with the specialist detective units of two English police services. It fills a significant gap in criminological literature by providing a timely and thought-provoking ethnography of detective culture, investigative practice, and drug law enforcement. Drawing on data collected from over five hundred hours of direct observation of ordinary police work, both on and off the streets, the chapters are skilfully interwoven with fieldnotes, informal conversations, interviews and analysis of official documents. Taken together, they explore how police officers perceive the drug world and their role in it, translate policy from its written form into action, and utilise intelligence-led policing strategies to instigate covert operations and make cases. There is in-depth examination of the everyday realities of the 'war on drugs', alongside the associated working rules, tacit understandings and underlying assumptions that operate behind the public face of police organizations. The book also critically examines the most pertinent legislative initiatives, organizational reforms, and shifts in thinking concerning the values, objectives and norms of policing that have occurred over recent decades, which, between them, have contributed to significant changes in the ways that detectives are trained and investigations are controlled and carried out. With highly salient insights regarding operational policing and drug control policy in the current social, economic and political climate, Taking Care of Business is a compelling and important work on contemporary criminal investigation and the policing of drugs. It will be of interest to scholars of criminology, sociology, law, and policy studies, especially those researching and studying policing, regulation, surveillance, drug control policy and the informal economy, as well as policymakers, police practitioners, and criminal justice professionals.

Download or read book Drugs Clubs and Young People written by Bill Sanders and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, contributors employ sociological and public health perspectives to offer insights into behaviours common at raves and nightclubs. The volume provides theoretical observations on illicit club drug use and supply, helping to challenge current orthodoxies on the role of drug use within young peoples' lives. Drawing material from the USA, UK and Hong Kong, the volume allows the demystification of stereotypical presentations surrounding young people who attend clubs and/or use club drugs. This work provides a badly needed and objective analysis of youthful drug use, and a foundation from which future sociological and public studies on young people, clubs and drugs - as well as young people themselves - will benefit.

Download or read book The Saturated Society written by Pekka Sulkunen and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009-03-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can policy makers justify public intervention into private life? And why does this interference often translate into contradictory or non-reflexive politics on lifestyles? This engaging title discusses the social, cultural and policy consequences of these conditions as well as showing the effect of agency and choice upon regulation. The book critically examines: - Neo-Liberal ideology and the free market - The Sociology of Modernity - The New Consumer Society - Citizenship in Mass Society - The power of Autonomy - The interaction of Regulation and Agency It provides a developed ′genealogical′ account of society, is enriched by original case-studies, and engages with a broad range of traditional approaches and sources - including the work of Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Adam Smith and Pierre Bourdieu. This well researched and thought-provoking work will be of interest to students of social policy and sociology as well as policy-makers and field workers.

Download or read book Drugs and Crime written by Serge Brochu and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing illegal drugs without taking into account its criminal context is a difficult proposition. Certain questions come back repeatedly: Does doing drugs really lead to delinquency? Do some drugs have criminal properties? Why would a drug addict turn to crime? What are the best methods of intervention in dealing with individuals who have serious drug habits? The third edition of Drogue et criminalité : Une relation complexe (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal), translated here for the first time in English, presents an overview of the complex relationship between drugs and crime, avoids cursory affirmations to the effect that psychoactive substance use necessarily leads to crime. It also sheds light on the political and legislative contexts tied to drugs and offers an exceptional synthesis of the research literature of the past 20 years. The authors also discuss the increased attention to illegal drug users and people with addictions, and describe the different supports that are available to them. This book is published in English. - Concevoir la question des drogues illicites en dehors de leur contexte criminel est difficile. Certaines questions reviennent immanquablement : prendre de la drogue pousse-t-il vraiment à la délinquance ? Existe-t-il des drogues aux propriétés criminogènes ? Pourquoi un toxicomane se tourne-t-il vers la criminalité ? Quelles sont les meilleures façons d’intervenir auprès des personnes qui ont de graves problèmes de consommation ? Cette troisième édition présente la relation complexe entre drogue et criminalité, évitant les énoncés sommaires qui voudraient que l’usage de substances psychoactives mène nécessairement au crime. Elle met ainsi en lumière les contextes politiques et légaux liés aux drogues et fait une synthèse exceptionnelle des résultats de la recherche des vingt dernières années. Les auteurs rendent compte de l’importance accrue qu’on accorde désormais aux usagers de drogues illicites ainsi qu’aux personnes dépendantes et ils décrivent les différentes formes d’aide qui leur sont proposées. Ce livre est publié en anglais.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of American Growth written by Robert J. Gordon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.

Download or read book Regulating Cannabis written by Tom Decorte and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the legalization of recreational cannabis markets in Uruguay, Canada, and several U.S. states, a breakthrough in conventional cannabis policy is emerging. But legalization is not a binary choice between prohibition and some regulated commercial model (like alcohol). A commercial market is just one of many ways to implement legalizationand moving directly from prohibition to commercial legalization leaps from one extreme to the other. Tom Decorte, a criminologist and anthropologist at Ghent University (Belgium), who has published numerous articles on substance use, cannabis markets, and local drug monitoring systems, argues that most of us are bypassing other, safer forms of legalization, including the nonprofit model. He explores topics such as: Why we need to consider regulation of cannabis markets. How local authorities and grassroots movements are advocating change. How to best design and implement approaches to legalization. Join the author as he examines international regulatory controls over cannabis possession, use, and cultivationas well as a framework for regulating the cannabis market via a nonprofit corporate model that promotes public health and safety over profits

Download or read book Altering Consciousness written by Etzel Cardeña and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of altered states of consciousness (ASC) shows how their study is necessary to gain a fundamental understanding of human culture, history, and biology. Altered consciousness is one of humanity's most mystical and life-altering aspects. These remarkable changes in mental state have understandably been a topic of general interest and scientific inquiry across time. Beyond simply satisfying our curiosity, however, studies focused upon altered consciousness can also bring valuable insights into our experience, biology, and culture. This unprecedented two-volume set will intrigue anyone interested in psychology, biology and neurology, science, history, arts and the humanities, and literature on consciousness, from general readers to scholars and researchers. An impressive collection of international contributors address altered states of consciousness from the perspectives of history, evolution, psychology, culture, literature, human biology, contemporary science, and society, seeking to illuminate the causes, effects, and meanings of altered consciousness. The first volume provides an introduction and centers on the importance of altered states in history, culture, and the humanities, while the second volume presents biological and psychological perspectives on altered consciousness and examines their potential for healing and pathology.