When Good Drugs Go Bad
Subtitle: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada's Drug Laws
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780774829199
Subjects: Law, canada; Drugs, law and legislation; Drug addiction; Narcotic laws; Opium abuse; Drug control; Medicine, canada
Description: "Throughout the 1800s, opium and cocaine could be easily obtained to treat a range of ailments in Canada. Dependency, when it occurred, was considered a matter of personal vice. Near the end of the century, attitudes shifted and access to drugs became more restricted. How did this happen? In this intoxicating history, Dan Malleck examines the conditions that lead to Canada's current drug laws. Drawing on newspaper accounts, medical and pharmacy journals, professional association records, asylum records, physician case books, and pharmacy records, Malleck demonstrates how a number of social, economic, and cultural forces converged in the early 1900s to influence lawmakers and criminalize addiction. His research exposes how social concerns about drug addiction had less to do with the long pipe and shadowy den than with lobbying by medical professionals, concern about the morality and future of the nation, and a growing pharmaceutical industry."--