ABSTRACT
Legal and illegal ingested substances have long given pleasure to those who have consumed them, from the Yanomamo using tobacco in Brazil (Chagnon 1977), Hippies smoking marijuana in Haight Ashbury (Cavan 1972), Africans drinking beer in a Bulawayo beer garden (Wolcott 1974) to English youth popping ecstasy pills in Manchester (H. Parker et al. 1998). Given the extent to which these substances have provided individual pleasure, as well as social and communal enjoyment, one is forced to ask the question: why then is it that so much of the research on ingested substances has ignored this central feature? Why, to quote D. Moore and Valverde, is pleasure the “great unmentionable?” (2000: 528). While it may be understandable that drug and public health researchers should focus more on the social and personal problems and risks, it is nevertheless surprising that the element of pleasure should have been so overlooked in the thousands of articles written on the use of illicit drugs.
