Opium And The People - Virginia Berridge, Griffith Edwards

Another one from our 'books about drugs' collection. Victorian England, already fascinating, and then you add the drugs. Opium mainly, first used as a natural medicine, and then there's also cocaine, cannabis, and 'other drugs' viewed through the lens of Nineteenth-Century England. It's amazing how many societal views and laws we have retained from Victorian times. This is an academic approach to the subject of addiction and society, and a very thorough one at that. *bit rare, gently read, pretty cool.