Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France, 1821-1926

Abstract

In Social Poison, Howard Padwa explores “what has led different countries to tackle the drug problem in different ways” (5). To answer that question, he studied the approaches of Great Britain and France, as both countries strengthened their drug policies in the early twentieth century. Britons addicted to morphine and heroin were given access to maintenance programs, but maintenance was illegal in France—even some amputees were denied morphine. Padwa explains that the nations' policies differed so greatly because their citizens “had different ways of conceptualizing the questions brought up by the unregulated flow of opiates and its possible effects on their national communities” (6). British drug policy was shaped by “concerns about economic well-being,” whereas French policy was driven by “the goal of creating a citizenry that did not overindulge in narcotics” (137). Because British and French concerns and perceptions differed, their resulting policies differed as well. The policies focused on opiates, including semisynthetic variations such as heroin. They had been around long enough to acquire “social and cultural meanings” (3) in Europe, and Padwa begins his study almost a century before the policies were established, in order to trace the evolution of those meanings. He sees Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, published in 1821, as establishing an enduring perception of opium addicts as elitist, inwardly directed, and somewhat foreign.