ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of moving pictures, in part because even the earliest filmmakers showed special interest in drug users and the effects of drugs. Films and later videos extended the powers of representation far beyond those of drawings or still photographs, giving latitude for extended narratives about the development of addiction and its maintenance and treatment. A thorough inventory of both documentary and entertainment films makes a comprehensive critical treatment of drugs in film impossible except in a multi-volume format. On the theme of addiction, the content and tone of pictorial representations have tended toward cautionary tales, intended on some level to warn the public against the lurking dangers of becoming addicted to drugs. Heroin use remained part of the filmmakers' repertoire of topics throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and during that period, the content included two major types, the biographical film and the young junkies in love type.
