Description
Book SynopsisBooze, dope, smokes, and weed. Mind-altering, mood-changing substances have been part of human society for millennia. And the history of drugs and alcohol is infused with what we understand as their proper and improper use.
Pleasure and Panic reveals how cultural fears and social, political, and economic disparities have always been deeply embedded in attitudes about drugs and alcohol. Long before John Lennon testified at Canada's Le Dain Commission in favour of marijuana decriminalization, social movements existed to challenge the view that consumption of mind-altering substances, especially by young people, posed a danger to society. The contributors to this collection explore how drugs and alcohol intersect with diverse histories, including gender, medicine, popular culture, and business.
Pleasure and Panic brings a dispassionate voice to current debates about liberalizing drug and alcohol laws and challenges existing ideas about how to deal with the
Trade Review
[Pleasure and Panic] is a compilation of fascinating studies that examine how the regulation and use of addictive substances have informed social movements, medical innovations, marketing, and even cultural identity.
-- Dave Hazzan * Literary Review of Canada *
"Despite the primarily Canadian focus and origins of this collection, there is much here for anyone broadly interested in the history of intoxicants."
-- David Adler, Bournemouth University * The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs *
Taken together, this collection [of essays] provides a valuable "state of the field," especially with regards to the history of drugs and alcohol in the Canadian context. -- Catherine Carstairs, University of Guelph * Canadian Journal of Health History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Problems with Pleasures / Dan Malleck
Part 1: Popular Pleasure and Panic
1 The Transgressive Woman: Gender, Class, Alcohol and Drugs in Canada from 1850 / Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
2 “To Find Out the Best Men and to Try to Get Them In”: Women, Temperance and Politics in Manchester 1873–1919 / Cynthia Belaskie
3 Youth, Drugs, and Surveillance at Manseau’s Woodstock Pop Festival / Eric Fillion
4 John Lennon, the LeDain Commission and the Rise of the Celebrity Activist / Greg Marquis
Part 2: Medicinal Pleasure and Panic
5 Manhood, Drink, and the “Medical Heresy” of U.S. Army Surgeon James Mann (1812–1816) / Renée Lafferty-Salhany
6 Medicinal Purposes: Pharmacists, Professionalism, and Liquor Laws in Victorian Ontario / Dan Malleck
7 A New Perspective on Harm Reduction: George Peters and the Chicago LSD Rescue Service / Christian Elcock
Part 3: The Business of Pleasure and Panic
8 Flogging a Dead Horse? Adulteration and Brewing in Nineteenth-Century England / Jonathan Reinarz
9 Charlie Wing and the Alberta Liquor Control Board: The Story of the First Chinese-Canadian Hotel Licensee in Post-Prohibition Alberta / Sarah Hamill
10 The Rise of the “Big Three”: The Emergence of a Canadian Brewing Oligopoly, 1945–1962 / Mathew J. Bellamy
Index
