'This is a great resource that reflects the huge expertise of the authors. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and indeed anyone wanting critical but comprehensive coverage of key issues and trends concerning drugs and society - locally and globally, historically and today.'
- Nigel South, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex
'Provides informative, balanced and contextualized insights into the relationships between people and drugs. Whatever your background and however knowledgeable you feel you are about contemporary drug issues, I guarantee that you will learn something unexpected and new from this valuable text.'
- Joanne Neale, Professor of Public Health, Oxford Brookes University
Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their involvement in drug use? Insightful and illuminating, this book discusses drugs in social contexts. The authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions.

This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as drug service practitioners such as drug workers, social workers and specialist nurses.

Professor Ross Coomber is teaches Criminology at Griffith University, Australia. 

PART ONE: TYPES OF DRUGS AND PATTERNS OF USE
What Is a Drug/Medicine?
Prevalence and Trends in Illicit Drug Use
Why Do People Take Drugs?
Addiction
Legal Drugs: Alcohol and Tobacco
Polydrug Use/Polysubstance Use
Common Illicit Drugs
Typologies of Drug Use: Use-Misuse-Abuse and Problematic-Recreational Use
Binge-Drinking
Raves and Circuit Parties
Dance Drugs/Club Drugs
Cross-cultural and Traditional Drug Use
Gender, Ethnicity and Social Class
Normalisation
PART TWO: DRUG EFFECTS
Drug Effects: Drug, Set and Setting
Medical Marijuana and Other Therapeutic Uses of Illicit Drugs
Prescribed and Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drugs
Novel Psychoactive Substances
The Gateway Hypothesis/Stepping Stone Theory
Drug-related Violence
Drugs and Crime
Drug Risks and Health Harms
Injecting Drug Use
HIV/AIDS and Other Blood-borne Viruses
PART THREE: DRUG POLICY, TREATMENT AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE DRUG PROBLEM
Drug Treatment and Quasi-compulsory Treatment (QCT)
Harm Reduction
Substitute Prescribing
The New Recovery Approach
Prevention: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary
International Drug Control History/Prohibition
Drugs in Sport
Drug Scares and Moral Panics
Drug Dealers
Drug Markets: Difference and Diversity
Drug Trafficking
Crop Eradication, Crop Substitution and Legal Cultivation
War on Drugs
Drug Testing in Schools and Workplaces
Drug Courts
Decriminalisation, Legalisation and Legal Regulation
Liberalisation