Hooked On History

This episode discusses the early medical history of the addict as an identity and addiction as a diagnosis. Demonstrating how ideas around degeneration and eugenics were influential in the early development the 'addict'. In doing so, we will also explore the origins of the liberal 'British System' of drug control and why it diverged so heavily from the USA's policy of criminalisation.

This episode covers why cannabis is illegal in the UK, the 1950s press using it to inflame fears around racial mixing and the police's use of drug laws to harass black people.

In this episode of our History of UK drug use: The 1950s and 1960s series we cover the thalidomide disaster which resulted in  10,000-15,000 babies to be born with malformed or missing limbs. This is  done in the context of the lax rules around pharmaceutical marketing, which we covered last episode, and the relationship between the medical  profession and the pharmaceutical industry.

In this episode of our History of UK drug use: The 1950s and 1960s series we will discuss drug advertising in the 50s and early 60s. The pharmaceutical boom of the 1950s was accompanied by a marketing boom and this episode will demonstrate the tactics drug companies used to push doctors to prescribe drugs; many of which were unneeded. We will also take a look at political reactions to the issue.

In this episode of our History of UK drug use: The 1950s and 1960s series I will present some of the origins of the Psychophamacological Revolution and the drug taking boom that accompanied it. We will also  examine the reactions of the medical profession to it, as their societal  role increasingly revolved around prescribing drugs.

In this short episode I introduce the series. It includes an overview of what the series will cover and and its relevance to our situation today.