Opium production and use connote international intrigues, illicit wealth, and social degeneracy to industrialized societies. The experiences and attitudes of those growing and using opiumin poppy-producing areas are not always so dramatic or so negative. For a total of three years between 1965 and 1975, Joseph Westermeyer practiced medicine and studied the function of opiumin Laos, where it is a cash crop, and from 1975 to 1982 he spent an additional six months studying opium addiction in other parts of Asia. His work gives a clear picture of the very different ways opium and its use are regarded in a developing agricultural society. Opium is a mainstay of the highland economy in Laos. Ease of Transport gives the poppy great advantage over other cash crops, although growers readily abandon its cultivation for work or animal husbandry that offers a higher profit. Opium can sometimes be used without addiction as a recreational intoxicant or folk medicine, but addiction is always a possibility, especially among the growers of the poppy themselves. Opium consumption can initially enhance productivity, but its long-term use is generally debilitating, and the biomedical, psychological, and familial problems commonly associated with drug addiction also occur in Laos. Westermeyer describes heroin as well as opium addiction, includes a chapter on Caucasian addicts, and evaluates indigenous and medical treatments for addiction. He shows how, lacking the cross-cultural perspective offered here, attempts by the United States to restrict opium flow have had little regard for the effect of narcotics policy on other countries, and actually opens the way for heroin use in Laos. Westermeyer's careful documentation is supplemented by individual vignettes that give a sense of the complex and often unpredictable reality of drug use. HIs analysis will change many stereotypic notions of opiate use in Asia, as it takes into account the myriad views and needs of people living under vastly different circumstances. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

An introduction to hazards, human vulnerability and disaster, paying particular attention to the more severe or novel risks and disaster that affect the general public. The book is split into two parts, the first of which gives an overview of the field of risk and disaster in terms of three perspectives: hazards perspective; vulnerability perspective and the active perspective. The second part illustrates and develops these ideas in relation to some of the more severe dangers and disasters of the twentieth century, for example, earthquake risk, cities at risk and the civil disasters of war.

This, the ninth volume in the series, appears some 13 years after the first. Like most of its predecessors, Volume 9 is deliberately eclectic, covering a range of topics that the editors think worthy of inclusion. Some of the chapters, such as the review of the literature on benzodiazepines, represent areas that have received relatively little attention in previous volumes-largely because the literature has not previously been "ripe" for review. Others represent literatures that have been reviewed in the past but which continue to advance in sufficient measure that their ripening never ceases. Shepard Siegel's contribution represents a relative rarity in previous volumes: a chapter not laden with a consideration of current empirical work, but a reflective essay designed to stir thought with some pro vocative ideas. The editors trust that readers will continue to find Research Advances to be an important repository of knowledge in the alcohol and drug fields. The Editors Toronto IX Contents 1. THE HUMAN PHARMACOLOGY OF NICOTINE Neal L. Benowitz 1. Introduction 2. Nicotine in Tobacco Products 2 3. Phannacokinetics of Nicotine 4 4. Nicotine and Cotinine Blood Levels during Tobacco Use 14 5. Intake of Nicotine during Cigarette Smoking 18 6. Biochemical Markers of Nicotine Intake 18 7. Regulation of Nicotine Intake during Cigarette Smoking 23 8. Phannacology of Nicotine 28 9. Importance of Nicotine in Human Disease 41 References 45 2. BENZODIAZEPINES AS DRUGS OF ABUSE AND DEPENDENCE 53 Howard D. Cappell, Edward M. Sellers, and Usoa Busto 1.

Fraser Lillooet Salmon Fishing - Steven Romanoff Cultural Resource Management and Archaeological Research in the Interior Pacific Northwest: A Note to NARN Readers on the Translucency of Northwest Archaeology - R. Lee Lyman An Annotated Bibliography of Opium and Opium-Smoking Paraphernalia - Priscilla Wegars The Multifunctional Use of Shellfish Remains: From Garbage to Community Engineering - Astrida R. Blukis Onat Bears and Bear Hunting in Prehistory: The Rock Art Record on the Yellowstone - Thomas H. Lewis

More than a hundred years have passed since the adoption of the first prohibitionist laws on drugs. Increasingly, the edifice of international drug control and laws is vacillating under pressures of reform. Scholarship on drugs history and policy has had a tendency to look at the issue mostly in the Western hemisphere of the globe or to privilege Western narratives of drugs and drugs policy. This volume instead turns this approach upside down and makes an intellectual attempt to redefine the subject of drugs in the Global South. Opium, heroin, cannabis, hashish, methamphetamines and khat are among the drugs discussed in the contributions to the volume, which spans from Sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, including the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and the Indian Subcontinent. The volume also makes a powerful case for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of drugs by juxtaposing the work of historians, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists and criminologists. Ultimately, this edited volume is a rich and diverse collection of new case studies, which opens up venues for further research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

In "Opium Culture," Peter Lee presents a fascinating narrative that covers every aspect of the art and craft of opium use. The text is studded with gems of long forgotten opium arcana, dispelling many of the persistent myths about opium and its users, and includes information on the suppression of opium by the modern pharmaceutical industry.