When good drugs go bad : opium, medicine, and the origins of Canada's drug laws

Malleck, Dan 1968- (Author).

Summary: "Throughout the 1800s, opium and cocaine could be easily obtained to treat a range of ailments in Canada. Dependency, when it occurred, was considered a matter of personal vice. Near the end of the century, attitudes shifted and access to drugs became more restricted. How did this happen? In this intoxicating history, Dan Malleck examines the conditions that lead to Canada's current drug laws. Drawing on newspaper accounts, medical and pharmacy journals, professional association records, asylum records, physician case books, and pharmacy records, Malleck demonstrates how a number of social, economic, and cultural forces converged in the early 1900s to influence lawmakers and criminalize addiction. His research exposes how social concerns about drug addiction had less to do with the long pipe and shadowy den than with lobbying by medical professionals, concern about the morality and future of the nation, and a growing pharmaceutical industry."--

Record details

ISBN: 9780774829199 (hardcover)
Physical Description: print
xi, 305 p. ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Vancouver, BC : UBC Press, 2015.

Content descriptions

General Note:	CatMonthString:september.15
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Medicating Canada before regulation -- Opium in nineteenth century medical knowledge -- Canada's first drug laws -- Chinese opium smoking and threats to the nation -- Medicine, addiction and ideas of nation -- Madness and addiction in the asylums of English Canada -- Proprietary medicine and the nation's health -- Regulating proprietary medicine -- Drug laws and the creation of illegality -- Conclusion: Baneful influences -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.