Containing Addiction

What we call the drug war is a series of wars stretching back nearly a century. And those wars, like the Cold War with which they overlapped, served many ends including national security interests and partisan politics. They did not serve, the goal of keeping Americans free of addiction, a plague now worse at the end of a century of drug warring.

The story of America's "War on Drugs" usually begins with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan. In Containing Addiction, Matthew R. Pembleton argues that its origins instead lie in the years following World War II, when the Federal Bureau of Narcotics - the country's first drug control agency, established in 1930 - began to depict drug control as a paramilitary conflict and sent agents abroad to disrupt the flow of drugs to American shores. U.S. policymakers had long viewed addiction and organized crime as profound domestic and transnational threats. Yet World War II presented new opportunities to implement drug control on a global scale. Skeptical of public health efforts to address demand, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics believed that reducing the global supply of drugs was the only way to contain the spread of addiction. In effect, America applied a foreign policy solution to a domestic social crisis, demonstrating how consistently policymakers have assumed that security at home can only be achieved through hegemony abroad. The result is a drug war that persists into the present day. -- from back cover.

This report considers the biological and behavioral mechanisms that may underlie the pathogenicity of tobacco smoke. Many Surgeon General's reports have considered research findings on mechanisms in assessing the biological plausibility of associations observed in epidemiologic studies. Mechanisms of disease are important because they may provide plausibility, which is one of the guideline criteria for assessing evidence on causation. This report specifically reviews the evidence on the potential mechanisms by which smoking causes diseases and considers whether a mechanism is likely to be operative in the production of human disease by tobacco smoke. This evidence is relevant to understanding how smoking causes disease, to identifying those who may be particularly susceptible, and to assessing the potential risks of tobacco products.

Examines OxyContin, the so-called miracle prescription drug that swept the nation but led to overdoes and addiction, providing a look at the multi-billion-dollar pain managment business, its excesses and its abuses.

Gain a fuller understanding of substance addiction and treatment options! Originally published in 1992 as The Facts About Drug Use, this updated edition contains new information about the effects of alcohol and recreational, mood-altering drugs on the body. The multiple causes of drug use and the options available to those dependent on drugs as a way of life are thoroughly and clearly described. Drug use affects nearly 1 out of 2 Americans and cuts across every social and economic boundary. The effects of addiction on the individual are great, and the cumulative effects on society are staggering. Knowledge of the adverse effects of mood-altering drugs and why and how they are used excessively is a centerpiece of this book. It presents, intelligently and interestingly, ways to identify persons at risk and identify problems that the addicted encounter in attempts to become drug free. Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, and the Road to Recovery: Life on the Edge is an essential tool in both finding available resources for drug users and developing appropriate responses to today's drug problem. This remarkable, well-referenced book enables those with little or no background in science or health care to understand the complex issues surrounding drug use. It provides current, reliable, and unbiased information on methods for dealing with dependency upon alcohol and central nervous system depressants, hallucinogens, heroin, nicotine, marijuana, caffeine, amphetamines, designer drugs like Ecstasy, and steroids. A glossary listing common street names for drugs will be invaluable to those interested in identifying specific substances. This comprehensive volume will show you: who typically uses drugs and the reasons why they do how to classify mood-altering drugs how to identify and treat drug dependency areas of special concern such as multiple drug use, AIDS and drug use, drugs and pregnancy, drugs and sports, and drug testing technology Chapter by chapter, this nonjudgmental book helps readers develop a better understanding of the effects of mood-altering substances and the reasons many continue to use them despite serious consequences. This is a valuable key to the nature of dependency and addiction, and the external forces (including poverty and homelessness) that promote such behavior.

With the revised information and up-to-date research, Out of the Shadows is the premier work on sex addiction, written by a pioneer in its treatment. Sex is at the core of our identities. And when it becomes a compulsion, it can unravel our lives. Out of the Shadows is the premier work on this disorder, written by a pioneer in its treatment. Revised and updated to include the latest research--and to address the exploding phenomenon of cybersex addiction--this third edition identifies the danger signs, explains the dynamics, and describes the consequences of sexual addiction and dependency. With practical wisdom and spiritual clarity, it points the way out of the shadows of sexual compulsion and back into the light and fullness of life.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

The authors employ the techniques of oral history to penetrate the nether world of the drug user, giving us an engrossing portrait of life in the drug subculture during the "classic" era of strict narcotic control. Praise for the hardcover edition: "A momentous book which I feel is destined to become a classic in the category of scholarly narcotic books." —Claude Brown, author of the bestseller, Manchild in the Promised Land. "The drug literature is filled with the stereotyped opinions of non-addicted, middle-class pundits who have had little direct contact with addicts. These stories are reality. Narcotic addicts of the inner cities are both tough and gentle, deceptive when necessary and yet often generous--above all, shrewd judges of character. While judging them, the clinician is also being judged." —Vincent P. Dole, M.D., The Rockefeller Institute. "What was it like to be a narcotic addict during the Anslinger era? No book will probably ever appear that gives a better picture than this one. . . . a singularly readable and informative work on a subject ordinarily buried in clichés and stereotypes." —Donald W. Goodwin, Journal of the American Medical Association " . . . an important contribution to the growing body of literature that attempts to more clearly define the nature of drug addiction. . . . [This book] will appeal to a diverse audience. Academicians, politicians, and the general reader will find this approach to drug addiction extremely beneficial, insightful, and instructive. . . . Without qualification anyone wishing to acquire a better understanding of drug addicts and addiction will benefit from reading this book." —John C. McWilliams, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography "This study has much to say to a general audience, as well as those involved in drug control." —Publishers Weekly "The authors' comments are perceptive and the interviews make interesting reading." —John Duffy, Journal of American History "This book adds a vital and often compelling human dimension to the story of drug use and law enforcement. The material will be of great value to other specialists, such as those interested in the history of organized crime and of outsiders in general." —H. Wayne Morgan, Journal of Southern History "This book represents a significant and valuable addition to the contemporary substance abuse literature. . . . this book presents findings from a novel and remarkably imaginative research approach in a cogent and exceptionally informative manner." —William M. Harvey, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs "This is a good and important book filled with new information containing provocative elements usually brought forth through the touching details of personal experience. . . . There isn't a recollection which isn't of intrinsic value and many point to issues hardly ever broached in more conventional studies." —Alan Block, Journal of Social History

An incisive look at the system of addiction pervasive in Western society today.

Bringing anthropological perspectives to bear on addiction, the contributors to this important collection highlight the contingency of addiction as a category of human knowledge and experience. Based on ethnographic research conducted in sites from alcohol treatment clinics in Russia to Pentecostal addiction ministries in Puerto Rico, the essays are linked by the contributors' attention to the dynamics—including the cultural, scientific, legal, religious, personal, and social—that shape the meaning of "addiction" in particular settings. They examine how it is understood and experienced among professionals working in the criminal justice system of a rural West Virginia community; Hispano residents of New Mexico's Espanola Valley, where the rate of heroin overdose is among the highest in the United States; homeless women participating in an outpatient addiction therapy program in the Midwest; machine-gaming addicts in Las Vegas, and many others. The collection's editors suggest "addiction trajectories" as a useful rubric for analyzing the changing meanings of addiction across time, place, institutions, and individual lives. Pursuing three primary trajectories, the contributors show how addiction comes into being as an object of knowledge, a site of therapeutic intervention, and a source of subjective experience. Contributors. Nancy D. Campbell, E. Summerson Carr, Angela Garcia, William Garriott, Helena Hansen, Anne M. Lovell, Emily Martin, Todd Meyers, Eugene Raikhel, A. Jamie Saris, Natasha Dow Schüll