This collection of new essays explores the complex and contested histories of drugs and narcotics in societies from ancient Greece up to publishing date.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine / John Scarborough -- 2. Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea, and distilled liquor, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries / Rudi Matthee -- 3. Pharmacological experimentation with opium in the eighteenth century / Andreas-Holger Maehle -- 4. The regulation of the supply of drugs in Britain before 1868 / S.W.F. Holloway -- 5. Das Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office) and the chemical industry in Germany during the Second Empire: partners or adversaries? / Erika Hickel -- 6. From all purpose anodyne to marker of deviance: physicians' attitudes towards opiates in the US from 1890 to 1940 / Caroline Jean Acker -- 7. Changes in alcohol use among Navajos and other Indians of the American Southwest / Stephen J. Kunitz and Jerrold E. Levy -- 8. The drug habit: the association of the word 'drug' with abuse in American history / John Parascandola.