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Book Cover
Book
Author DeGrandpre, Richard J.

Title The cult of pharmacology : how America became the world's most troubled drug culture / Richard DeGrandpre
Published Durham : Duke University Press, 2006

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  615.1 Deg/Cop  AVAILABLE
Description 294 pages ; 25 cm
Contents Mama Coca -- Cult of the SSRI -- The emperor's new smokes -- The placebo text -- America's domestic drug affair -- War -- The drug reward -- Possessed by the stimulus -- Ideology -- Escalation of American drug laws in the twentieth century -- U.s. regulations encouraging a white market for drugs in the twentieth century
Summary "The Cult of Pharmacology tells the dramatic story of how, as one legal drug after another fell from grace, new pharmaceutical substances took their place. Whether Valium or OxyContin at the pharmacy, cocaine or meth purchased on the street, or alcohol and tobacco from the corner store, drugs and drug use proliferated in twentieth-century America despite an escalating war on "drugs."" "Richard DeGrandpre delivers a remarkably original interpretation of drugs by examining the seductive but ill-fated belief that they are chemically predestined to be either good or evil. He argues that the determination to treat the medically sanctioned use of drugs such as Miltown or Seconal separately from the illicit use of substances such as heroin or ecstasy has blinded America to how drugs are transformed by the manner in which a culture deals with them."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Drug utilization -- United States.
Pharmaceutical industry -- United States.
Drugs -- Social aspects -- United States.
LC no. 2006014259
ISBN 9780822338819 cloth alkaline paper
0822338815 cloth alkaline paper