Reviewed by Mike Jay

Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear
by Dr. Carl L. Hart
Penguin Press, 290 pp., $16.94
NYRB

The modern meaning of “drugs” is of surprisingly recent origin. Until the twentieth century, the word referred to all medications (as it still does in “drugstore”); it was only around 1900 that it developed a more specialized meaning, uniting what had previously been a disparate group of pharmaceutical products, chemicals used in medical research, and herbal intoxicants. Initially, this new usage of “drugs” referred to toxic and addictive substances that were to be taken only under the direction of a physician. Once the trade in these substances was criminalized in the early twentieth century, the word connoted illegality. [Read more…]