Secondary Source Evaluation
Acker, Caroline Jean. Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. Print.
Caroline Acker’s book examines the history of both drug use and drug policy, focused in the United States. She researches how and why the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding drug users were created, honing in on heroin addicts and the ensuing stigmatization. Addicts are often seen as social deviants, threats to the overall order and safety of society, and unredeemable “junkies” who are not worth the resources required to save them. There is a belief that addicts will commit serious crimes in order to obtain and use their drugs, as they are enslaved to the hold it has on them. Acker focuses on the classic era of narcotics control, which is 1919 to 1960, as she credits this time period with the development of the social stereotypes. Common press, pulp fiction, movies, and radio shows employed these stereotypes, a practice that unknowingly directly affected the public health policy makers and the medical professionals who enforced them.
Acker shows how, between 1919 and 1960 “the addict stereotyped emerged from the interaction between the first cohort of recreational opiate users (grappling with the challenges of maintaining a habit under a new drug-prohibition regime), researchers in psychiatry and pharmacology (pursing their own professional agendas), and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Division of Narcotics, striving to criminalize non-medical opiate use and end the treatment of addicts by private physicians.” Acker provides stories of early 20th century opiate addicts, taken from the narcotics ward at the Philadelphia General Hospital, and then compares these personal accounts with those of addicts during the early 20th century urban vice reform. She tracks how drug users were pushed underground by the passage of different Narcotics Acts, and how users became seen as threats to public morality. The book proceeds on throughout history, studying the way the stigma of the junkie shaped and continues to shape drug policy, effectively forcing drug users to remain on the margins of the US health care system.
Acker believes that “The American junkie is a product of American history. The heroin addict – typically portrayed in movies, newspapers, and folklore as the heroin-addicted male urban hustler – emerged during a period when the marketing of opiates and the management of urban vice was undergoing profound transformations. These changes created the context for a particular pattern of exposure to now criminalized opiated and of managing the highly stigmatized addiction that resulted from the exposure.”
I have not seen an alternative argument portrayed in Acker’s book. She remains firm in her theory that the stigmatizations and stereotypes developed during the narcotics control period directly and negatively affected public health policy, making it more difficult for addicts to receive appropriate treatment when seeking sobriety.