Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Seth Blumenthal, contributing editor and lecturer at Boston University. In 1972 , spelling out marijuana’s gateway potential to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, President Richard Nixon explained, “Once you cross that line, from the straight society to the drug society – marijuana, then speed, then it’s LSD, thenContinue reading “The Complicated Birth of the Gateway Theory”
Category Archives: Seth Blumenthal
From Preventing “Experiments with Vice” to Bullhorns and Expulsion: Drug Education After the 1970s
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Seth Blumenthal, contributing editor and lecturer at Boston University. As late as 1955, a career Narcotics Bureau enforcement official, M.L. Harney, feared drug prevention’s unintended consequences, claiming, “Often the evil warned against is portrayed so attractively, seductively, and voluptuously that the inevitable result would be to attractContinue reading “From Preventing “Experiments with Vice” to Bullhorns and Expulsion: Drug Education After the 1970s”
World War II and Drug Prevention
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Seth Blumenthal, contributing editor and lecturer at Boston University. In 1937, as the first director for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry J. Anslinger eliminated any possibility that cannabis, or “marihuana,” could be a gateway drug. When asked during Congressional hearings if “the marihuana addict graduatesContinue reading “World War II and Drug Prevention”
A Book Proposal in Drug History: Considering Audience
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Seth Blumenthal, contributing editor and lecturer at Boston University. Today, he explores what academics — especially those of us writing about timely topics like alcohol and drugs — should consider when thinking about their audience(s). Public or academic? How do we reach readers? How can weContinue reading “A Book Proposal in Drug History: Considering Audience”
Legalization Report: NIMBY in Newton, Massachusetts
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dr. Seth Blumenthal, contributing editor and lecturer at Boston University. He’s been tracking the roll out of recreational marijuana legalization in his home state of Massachusetts and provides this report. Enjoy! As I sat behind the police chief while he spoke to the City Council in favor of aContinue reading “Legalization Report: NIMBY in Newton, Massachusetts”
Surveying Drug Prevention
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Seth Blumenthal. In it, he surveys how schools, parents, and Congress responded to increased drug use in the 20th century through anti-drug abuse education initiatives. In the opening scene of the 1936 cult classic Reefer Madness, Dr. Alfred Carrol speaks to a parents’ group about preventingContinue reading “Surveying Drug Prevention”