Drugs are about as American these days as apple pie. Despite years of sanctimonious lecturing and scaremongering from the US establishment – and a billion-dollar, decades-long war on importers, manufactures, street pushers and users – drugs are just as popular today as they were when Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground so eloquently sang: ‘Hey white boy, whachya doin’ uptown,’ in the seminal song ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. The track was recorded in 1967 – when heroin addiction was rife across the USA.
But where the establishment has failed with heavy-handed policing, perhaps this book is the answer. For nothing is more guaranteed to give the kiss of nerdishness to what was cool than the pontificating of a gaggle of academics.
According to the publishers, the book ‘presents an upto- date anthology of chiefly contemporary readings that explore the myriad sociological correlates of licit and illicit drug use in the United States’.
It continues: ‘[The book] is a unique approach to the topic that offers an organising theme of sociological concepts-age, social class, ethnicity, gender, as well as societal response to drug use including drug education, treatment, and policy.’
Faced with such an introduction, readers might start reaching for their drug of choice. Any who do not feel such an urge can congratulate themselves on having a strong tolerance to academic pontificating.
But where the establishment has failed with heavy-handed policing, perhaps this book is the answer. For nothing is more guaranteed to give the kiss of nerdishness to what was cool than the pontificating of a gaggle of academics.
According to the publishers, the book ‘presents an upto- date anthology of chiefly contemporary readings that explore the myriad sociological correlates of licit and illicit drug use in the United States’.
It continues: ‘[The book] is a unique approach to the topic that offers an organising theme of sociological concepts-age, social class, ethnicity, gender, as well as societal response to drug use including drug education, treatment, and policy.’
Faced with such an introduction, readers might start reaching for their drug of choice. Any who do not feel such an urge can congratulate themselves on having a strong tolerance to academic pontificating.
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