George Fisher seeks the moral roots of America's antidrug regime and challenges claims that early antidrug laws arose from racial animus. Those moral roots trace to early Christian sexual strictures, which later influenced Puritan condemnations of drunkenness, and ultimately shaped the early American drug war. Early laws against opium dens, cocaine, and cannabis rarely rose from racial strife, but sprang from the traditional moral censure of intoxication and perceived threats to respectable white women and youth. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.
Notes
Also issued in print: 2024.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Target audience
Specialized.
Source of description
Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on November 8, 2023).
Contents
Moral roots
Sex, drunkenness, and the euphoria taboo
The gin crisis
Prohibition's rise, its fall, and the reign of social drinking
Medical drug use versus recreational abuse
Racial myths
Race in the dens and miscegenation myths
Crazed racial coke fiends
Marijuana : assassin of youth
Monogamy's demise?
ISBN
9780197688502
0197688500
9780197688519
0197688519
9780197688496
0197688497
OCLC
1401671495
Doi
10.1093/oso/9780197688489.001.0001
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