The Drug Effect

Book excerpt: The Drug Effect: Health, Crime and Society offers new perspectives on critical debates in the field of alcohol and other drug use. Drawing together work by respected scholars in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada, it explores social and cultural meanings of drug use and analyses law enforcement and public health frameworks and objectives related to drug policy and service provision. In doing so, it addresses key questions of drug use and addiction through interdisciplinary, predominantly sociological and criminological, perspectives, mapping and building on recent conceptual and empirical advances in the field. These include questions of materiality and agency, the social constitution of disease and neo-liberal subjectivity and responsibility. This book provides a fresh scholarly perspective on drug use and addiction by collecting top quality original work, written by a mix of international leaders in the field and emerging scholars working at the cutting edge of research.