ABSTRACT
Drug analysis, like drug addiction, has come of age. Now that heroin addiction is reported to have reached epidemic proportions among American troops in Vietnam, marihuana has become nearly as common as cigarettes on campuses, and LSD is an entrenched household staple, the search for cures looms everywhere. The study of drugs was pioneered by the social scientists; medical research has in the past been more concerned with alcoholism and chemical equivalents to harmful drugs. But now medical, pharmaceutical, and biological researchers have emerged in full force—creating a literature that catalogues each of the hundred strains of marihuana, proposes methadone-treatment centers in every major city, assures us that heroin kills far fewer people than the unsanitary injections used to introduce it into the body, and 156explains the physical effect of every drug. We have manuals of drug symptoms, dictionaries of drug slang, and self-help programs ranging from government reports to privately sponsored treatment centers. Yet with all this investment of numbers, time, energy, money, research, and the panoply of professionally responsible agencies, the use of drugs in American society continues to increase dramatically.
