Creating the American Junkie

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.

subjects: Narcotic habit,  Heroin habit,  Government policy,  Narcotic addicts,  Research,  Drug addiction,  Drug addicts,  Heroin,  Drugs, research,  Drug control,  Drug abuse,  Heroin abuse,  Heroin Dependence,  History,  Drug and Narcotic Control,  Etiology,  Social aspects