Quick Fixes - Drugs in America From Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge

This is your nation's history on drugsAmericans are stumbling through a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics-across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?Quick Fixes blows away the pharmacological fog to take a sober look at how drugs have shaped American society. Though particularly acute in recent decades, the contradiction between America's passionate love for and intense hatred of these sub - stances has been one of its defining characteristics for over a century. Through nine chapters, each devoted to the modern history of a drug or class of drugs, Fong examines Americans' fraught relationship with psychoactive substances. As society changes, it produces different forms of stress, isolation, and alienation. These changes, in turn, affect the development and spread of medications and narcotics among the populace.By laying out the histories, functions, and experiences of our chemical com - forts, the hope is to help answer that ever-perplexing question: what does it mean to be an American?

About the author

Benjamin Y. Fong is Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, the Honors College and Associate Director of the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University. He is the author of Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism (Columbia, 2016) and co-editor with Craig Calhoun of The Green New Deal and the Future of Work (Columbia, 2022). His other work can be found in Jacobin, Catalyst, The New York Times, and Damage Magazine, amongst other places.

Product details

• Authors: Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Benjamin Y. Fong
• Publisher: Verso
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.07.2023
• EAN: 9781804290170
• ISBN: 978-1-80429-017-0
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 210 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Jacobin
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; USA, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disease & Health Issues, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Manufacturing, 21st Century, LAW / Drugs & the Law, Drug & substance abuse: social aspects, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Drugs trade / drug trafficking, United States of America, USA, Drugs and alcohol: social aspects, Chemical, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, Chemical industries