Classics in the drug literature

Someone -- I don't recall who, was it you, alli -- was asking me recently about what I thought the classics in the drugs literature were. Not sure what they'd read that I'd recommended.

Anyway, I once did a series of long review articles on this subject. Each month, I'd take a classic and spend 2000 words looking at it. They were in early versions of the International Journal on Drug Policy.

But I'll post some of mine here, and I'd be interested to hear what other people thought rated as classics.

I like historical work a lot. Virginia Berridge's Opium and the People is a fine piece of work that I wish that I'd written myself. Aside from the very last chapter, which I always felt was co-written by Griffith Edwards, and has no real relationship to the rest of the text, this is one of those books that is as perfect as you can get.

She writes beautifully about a subject that is also data rich, but she never gets boring or turns you off the subject. On the contrary, she leaves you wanting more.

There are a handful of other historical books on heroin and cocaine use. From the UK, Marek Kohn's books, Dope Girls and Narcomania are probably the best. Again, both books I wish I'd written. He's one exceptionally smart guy.

From the USA, there's stuff like Arnold Trebach's The Heroin Solution, David Courtwright's Dark Paradise, Don Des Jarlais et. al. Addicts Who Survived -- more of an oral history. But if I had to choose just one, I'm pretty sure I'd go with Virginia Berridge.