United States

Navigating Cannabis Use in Legal and Illegal Contexts Across Continents: An Interview

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As part of our Pharmaceutical Inequalities series, Ejura Salihu interviews a 25-year-old Nigerian man, who now lives in the United States and uses cannabis, to understand his experiences of navigating the legal considerations of using cannabis in different geographical contexts.

Introducing ‘The Drug Page’: A New Online Resource and Digital Humanities Project

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Editor’s Note: In this latest ‘Points’ blog, Isaac Campos introduces thedrugpage.org which features his new digital humanities project on early twentieth century cannabis discourses in the United States. Below, Campos describes the origins of the research featured on The Drug Page and his intended mission in sharing it. We look forward to watching its evolution!

Twenty years ago, when I was living in Mexico City researching my dissertation, I had a daily routine. I’d spend the first part of the day, roughly from 9-3, at one of the major historical archives. Then I’d take the subway downtown to the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Library. After a rejuvenating cup of coffee nearby, I’d go into the library’s dimly-lit, cavernous research room to pore over old newspapers. That is, the original, printed copies from a century ago. Each of the desks was equipped with a big wooden stand where the ample bound volumes could be safely opened to reveal their weathered old pages. I can still hear the sound of pages turning backed by the echoes from the teeming city. I did that for two hours every afternoon. I turned a lot of pages at the Lerdo Library that year.

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Disparities & Inequalities in Ending the HIV Epidemic: Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)

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Editor’s Note: This post by Maeleigh Tidd is the second in our Pharmaceutical Inequalities series. She explores the recent Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative in the US, with a particular focus on prevention strategies, specifically PrEP, that are being implemented to assist in ending the epidemic. The Pharmaceutical Inequalities series is funded by the Holtz Center and the Evjue Foundation.

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Situation Report: Conducting Research at the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland (Archives II)

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Editor’s Note: This situation report provides an overview of the current protocols at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (Archives II). Please note this refers to Archives II only, as at early April 2022, and may be subject to change. Please check the NARA website for updates and communicate with the archives before making any definitive research plans. For further information and updates see: https://www.archives.gov/college-park.

Many thanks to Bill McAllister for agreeing to share his personal experiences/correspondence with the Points audience.

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What We Left Behind in Afghanistan

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Stefano Tijerina, a lecturer in management and the Chris Kobrack Research Fellow in Canadian Business History at the University’s of Maine’s Business School.

After twenty years of nation-building in Afghanistan, the United States leaves behind a country in shambles. It might be argued that we slowed down the momentum of terrorist cells and that we kept the Taliban in check for two decades. But there seem to be few positive long-terms stories to highlight—perhaps the empowerment of Afghan women; but that might not last very long under renewed Taliban rule.

Afghanistan is rich in natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious/semiprecious stones, and arable land [1]. But, during the American presence, the country was not targeted by the Western private sector to harness these potential economic development capabilities. The only real area of growth over the last two decades was opium production—that is perhaps our legacy in Afghanistan.

According to the most recent “Afghanistan Opium Survey” report of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan is the largest opium producer in the world [2]. UNODC also reported that the Taliban was the biggest buyer of opium and the biggest collector of opium production taxes as well [3]. Moreover, “sales of opium and poppy derivatives constituted the main source of income” for more than half of the population, and the “gross income from opiates exceeded the value of the country’s officially recorded licit exports in 2019″ [4].

Left: A poppy field in Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 3, 2013. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

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Big Nicotine, Part II: Addiction and the “Cult of Pharmacology”

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Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its intention to lower the nicotine content of cigarettes to, ideally, “minimally or nonaddictive” levels. Public health advocates celebrated the decision; on the other hand, Big Tobacco investors began dumping shares at the prospect of supplying an ever-more-elastic demand.

Cigarette critics and capitalists alike belong to what Richard DeGrandpre calls the “cult of pharmacology,” a system of belief that dominates American drug discourse. Rooted in modernist faith in understanding the world through scientific approach, by the early twentieth century many considered drug experience to be a straightforward process of brain and body chemistry, without regard for concepts we might recognize today as set and setting. Historically contingent forces divide drugs into “angel” and “demon” categories, but their effects are similarly reduced to biological mechanism: “‘soul’ was reinterpreted as ‘mind,’ and ‘spirit’ was reinterpreted as ‘biochemistry.’”

But cults are given to blind faith, so it is worth considering the extent to which substances are to blame for problem use.

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