Creating the American Junkie
Subtitle: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: March 29, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780801867989
Subjects: Drug addiction & substance abuse; History of medicine; 20th century; Medical / Nursing; Drug Abuse; Social Policy; Sociology - General; Social Science; Medical; USA; Psychopathology - Addiction; General; History; Medical / History; United States; Social aspects; Public Policy - General; Drug addiction; Heroin abuse; Research
First sentence: The American junkie is a product of American history.
Description: "Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irredeemable deviance. Creating the American Junkie examines how psychiatrists and psychologists produccd a construction of opiate addicts as deviants with inherently flawed personalities who were caught in the grip of a dependency from which few would eacape.

Their portrayal of the tough urban addict helped bolster the federal government's policy of drug prohibition and created a social context that made the life of the American heroin addict - or junkie - more, not less, precarious in the wake of Progressive Era reforms."--BOOK JACKET.