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"Asks fundamental questions about US drug policies and social norms. Why do we endorse the use of some drugs and criminalize others? Why do we accept the necessity of a doctor-prescribed opiate but not the same thing bought off the street? ... Ingrid Walker speaks to the silencing effects of both criminalization and medicalization, incorporating first-person narratives to show a wide variety of user experiences with drugs. By challenging current thinking about drugs and users, Walker calls for a next wave of drug policy reform in the United States, beginning with recognizing the full spectrum of drug use practices"--Back cover.
List of contents
Preface: Breaking User Silence
Acknowledgments
Introduction | We Are All Users
1.
Picture a Drug User
Jim: Feeding My Family
Mordecai: Normal
Ella: Time
2.
Criminalization: Winning the Crusade but Losing the War
Jason: The Little Engine That Could
Marcus: Reflections of a Philosopher-Cop on the Drug War
3.
Medicalization: Defining Drug Use
Lucius: Not What You Think
Nadine: Like a Storm
Jose: The Cure
Brittany: Ask Your Doctor
4.
Why We Use: The Pleasure and the Eros of Drugs
Bonnie: Evening Smoke
Cosmo: What Could Be
Mark: It's Not What, It's How
Kyla: Note from a Socially Integrated Drug User
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
Ingrid Walker is associate professor of American studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
