Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way

Many of what we now consider recreational drugs were at one time used as medicine. Marijuana was a widely used palliative in disparate societies worldwide, with written references aplenty in the archaeological record. Poppy crowns on Greek statues of gods and references on Sumerian tablets attest to the long history of opium use. Employing a skeptical, even-handed approach to the history of the use and abuse of drugs, and society's intermittent efforts at drug regulation, the two-volume Hooked (Volume 1: Marijuana, Opium, Morphine and Heroin; Volume 2: Cocaine, LSD, Ecstasy and the Raves) presents a comprehensive chronicle of how certain substances were at first celebrated and prescribed, but later vilified and proscribed. Its admirable failure to tar all psychoactive substances as assassins of youth and virtue may sadly make it verboten for collections serving institutions enamored of "zero tolerance" policies, and that's a shame. A little historical perspective is a valuable thing, and for drug education programs, this set is the historical goods. From England's intervention in the Chinese emperor's efforts to fight opium abuse in his realm (the Opium Wars, spurred when England went to war with China to preserve its lucrative opium importation business) to Bayer's (the aspirin maker's) marketing of heroin as a headache remedy, to Freud's rhapsodizing over the effects of discrete cocaine use, the program limns mankind's never-ending search for mood-altering substances whether for healing or mere recreation. Authoritative, detailed and objective, this title is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Tribby)