Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America Before 1940,

In this eye-opening book, David Courtwright offers an original interpretation of a puzzling chapter in American social and medical history: the dramatic change in the pattern of opiate addiction. Once observed primarily among upper- and middle-class matrons, addiction came to be concentrated among young, lower-class urban males, often with a delinquent or criminal record. He challenges the view that the shift resulted simply from new laws such as the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, and shows that a crucial role was played by the medical rather than the legal profession. Courtwright's blending of medical and scientific literature with newspaper accounts, oral histories, and personal documents results in a striking exegesis of attitudes and practices still very much with us.