David Courtwright, Herman Joseph , and Don Des Jarlais. 2012. Addicts Who Survived: An Oral History of Narcotic Use in America before 1965. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. $24.99. Paper. pp. 416. ISBN‐10: 1572339373.

• Author: Grace Reynolds
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.142
• Published date: 01 June 2015
• Date: 01 June 2015

Book Review

David Courtwright, Herman Joseph, and Don Des Jarlais. 2012. Addicts Who

Survived: An Oral History of Narcotic Use in America before 1965. Knoxville:

University of Tennessee Press. $24.99. Paper. pp. 416. ISBN-10: 1572339373.

This book was originally published in 1989 and covers the history of narcotics

in the United States through an historical overview of legislation as well as life

history interviews with addicts, mostly from New York City. The book is divided

into three main parts, ref‌lecting the life cycle of the addicts whose stories are

shared throughout the book (Becoming an Addict; In the Life; Treatment). The

epilogue to the 1989 edition is included as well as a new epilogue to this 2012

reissued paperback edition. Addicts Who Survived focuses on what the authors call

the “classic” era of heroin and opiate drug abuse (1923–1965), the period during

which most of the narcotic control policies in place today were f‌irst introduced.

For a similar, but more contemporary look at drug addiction using similar life

history methods, Righteous Dopef‌iend (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009) explores poly

drug use among heroin injectors and crack cocaine users in San Francisco.

The Introduction sets the stage for the life history interviews. At the turn of the

twentieth century in the United States, there was little if any regulation of narcotics.

Opium was widely prescribed by physicians and many patent medicines included

opium as an active ingredient. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act forced

physicians to stop prescribing opium and the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914

required sellers and distributors of narcotics to register with the government and

pay a tax. The book details the evolution of opiate use from the very private

purview of physicians and patients, into the street and the black market and

eventually as a mainstay of organized crime. This movement of drug addiction

from a largely private matter to a public problem also followed other demographic

shifts in both drug suppliers and drug users. Because organized crime gangs

wanted to increase their prof‌its from the sale of illicit drugs, they diluted them. The

decrease in potency of diluted street drugs forced addicts to use more of them to

achieve the same effects, which in turn led to practices such as injection drug use.

At the same time, the demographics of addiction were shifting from White and

female patients prescribed opium by their personal physicians or immigrant

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2015

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1948-4682 #2015 Policy Studies Organization

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