HLTHAGE 2L03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, Moral Panic, Morphine
1 Nov 2018
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Drugs are not classified according to chemical properties or effects. Substances previously seen as helpful or neutral become criminalized and demonized, meaning we come to understand them quite differently (and vice versa) To understand a drugs qualities we must consider the interplay between those who use the drug, why they use the drug, and who we imagine to be using the drug. Understood as a pain medication prior to the 20th century. Opium wars: britain"s colonization of south asia led to them obtaining huge supplies of opium. The problem was that markets for opium started to close - concerns over dangerousness of drug but also to protect against westernization. Britain went to war with china to force them to allow opium imports. Other poppy derivatives (i. e. morphine) was similarly represented, but addiction fears arose among patients and medical doctors in the late 19th c.
