Description
Book SynopsisThis intoxicating look at the history of drug regulation in Canada reveals how a variety of social and political forces converged at the turn of the twentieth century to transform both public attitudes toward, and access to, narcotics.
Trade ReviewIn Malleck’s brilliant account we can see how commercial interests both combined and competed with professionals and sellers to influence Canada’s drug laws … As Canadians debate how marijuana should be designated—legal or illegal, medicine or recreational drug or both—Malleck provides a fascinating description of a similar journey taken by pain medications such as opium and cocaine at the beginning of the last century. His book provides a useful history to help us navigate today’s discussions about who should grow and sell safe and affordable marijuana.
-- Colleen Fuller, a researcher and writer focused on health and pharmaceutical policy * Alberta Views *
Malleck’s extensive use of primary sources convincingly establishes this context and describes the dominant origin story of Canada’s drug laws that has not frequently been told. -- Noah Wernikowski * Saskatchewan Law Review *
Malleck vividly depicts how sensationalism, misunderstanding, and the threat to the practise of medicine fuelled the new concept of addiction distinct from insanity and moral depravity. Malleck’s scouring of all available records provides a rich understanding of how the social and cultural factors surrounding opium in Canada set the stage for the moral debate over drug use … His thorough analysis and ability to draw on a mountain of records to seamlessly tell the story provides the reader with a new found appreciation of the complex development of drug legislation in the modern era. -- Joel Rudewicz * Active History *
[A] close study of how doctors, pharmacists, bureaucrats, and policy-makers wrestled over the control of opiates in the decades leading to the first Opium Act of 1908 … When Good Drugs Go Bad will be of interest to scholars exploring the history of drugs and their regulation while also adding to our understanding of state formation and professionalization during the nineteenth century. Its multi-regional focus on Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia serves to nationalize these issues. Malleck also addresses and critically challenges the association in British Columbia between anti-Chinese sentiments and opium that, he argues, has distorted events by insisting that the Opium Act was a reaction to racial tensions. Instead, by broadening the regional lens, Malleck shifts the story to a contest over professional authority.
-- Erika Dyck * BC Studies *
When Good Drugs Go Bad deepens our understanding of the connections that could be so easily drawn between the body, race, medicine and the nation in early twentieth century Canada. -- Yvan Prkachin, Harvard University * Left History, Vol. 21 No. 1, Spring-Summer 2016 *
[When Good Drugs Go Bad] is a well-written and well-researched book… Readers will learn much about the “awesome, awe-inspiring, and awful substance” that was opium... Readers may also find that Malleck’s discussion of “danger” and addiction fears with this drug in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resonates with today’s opioid debates.
-- Shelley McKellar, University of Western Ontario * Pharmacy in History, Vol 60, No 3 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Its Baneful Influences
1 Medicating Canada before Regulation
2 Opium in Nineteenth-Century Medical Knowledge
3 Canada’s First Drug Laws
4 Chinese Opium Smoking and Threats to the Nation
5 Medicine, Addiction, and Ideas of Nation
6 Madness and Addiction in the Asylums of English Canada
7 Proprietary Medicines and the Nation’s Health
8 Regulating Proprietary Medicine
9 Drug Laws and the Creation of Illegality
Conclusion: Baneful Influences
Notes; Bibliography; Index
