Title Smack : heroin and the American city / Eric C. Schneider

Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2008

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 259 pages) : illustrations Series Politics and culture in modern America Politics and culture in modern America Contents Introduction: Requiem for the city -- New York and the global market -- Jazz joints and junk -- The plague -- The panic over adolescent heroin use -- Ethnicity and the market -- The rising tide -- Dealing with dope -- Heroin suburbanizes -- The war and the war at home -- From the Golden Spike to the Glass Pipe -- Conclusion: Heroin markets redux Summary Through interviews with former junkies and clinic workers and in-depth archival research, Schneider also chronicles the dramatically shifting demographic profile of heroin users. Originally popular among working-class whites in the 1920s, heroin became associated with jazz musicians and Beat writers in the 1940s. Musician Red Rodney called heroin the trademark of the bebop generation. "It was the thing that gave us membership in a unique club," he proclaimed. Smack takes readers through the typical haunts of heroin users - 52nd Street jazz clubs, Times Square cafeterias, Chicago's South Side street corners - to explain how young people were initiated into the drug culture." "Smack recounts the explosion of heroin use among middle-class young people in the 1960s and 1970s. It became the drug of choice among a wide swath of youth, from hippies in Haight-Ashbury and soldiers in Vietnam to punks on the Lower East Side. Panics over the drug led to the passage of increasingly severe legislation that entrapped heroin users in the criminal justice system without addressing the issues that led to its use in the first place. The book ends with a meditation on the evolution of the war on drugs and addresses why efforts to solve the drug problem must go beyond eliminating supply Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-244) and index Notes In English Subject Drug control -- United States -- History Drug traffic -- United States -- History Minorities -- Substance use -- United States -- History Heroin abuse -- United States -- History HISTORY -- United States -- 20th Century. Drug control Drug traffic Heroin abuse Minorities -- Substance use United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780812203486 0812203488

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