Key Concepts in Drugs and Society (SAGE Key Concepts series)

This is a great resource that does what it promises and reflects the huge expertise of the authors. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and indeed anyone wanting critical but comprehensive coverage of key issues and trends concerning drugs and society - locally and globally, historically and today. (Nigel South)

This highly accessible book provides informative, balanced and contextualized insights into the relationships between people and drugs. Whatever your background and however knowledgeable you feel you are about contemporary drug issues, I guarantee that you will learn something unexpected and new from this valuable text. (Joanne Neale)

This broad and thorough text provides the reader with great insight into the reality of substance use in society. It eagerly challenges the readers' assumptions and beliefs about drug use and drug users with sound international evidence. All of us who work in areas relating to drug use, whether that be pertaining to education, legislation, criminal justice or clinical practice would do well to read this book and remember the historical and socio-political context in which we work. A pleasurable and page turning read! (Anna Nelson)

The authors’ presentation of this vast amount of material is lucid, up-to-date and very student-friendly. Coomber and his colleagues have done well: this is an excellent text which should prove useful to third-level teachers and their students for years to come.

(Shane Butler)

While its structure lends itself to dipping in and providing a veneer of understanding and insight into some of the thorny issues which surround drugs, it is also very readable, and the links between various headings are clearly flagged... it provides a great deal of information and clarity, and provides an excellent basis for common understanding and meaningful debate. We could all benefit from more of that.

(David MacKintosh)

Scholars, students or even a lay audiences, will find this useful for grounding themselves in a broad understanding of the roles that drugs play in human society... a welcome addition to the tool box: it helps restore a learning style that has been largely displaced by an MTV-style of learning that blasts factoids in a pastiche of information with no apparent rhyme, reason or theoretical foundation to support it. Key Concepts covers a prodigious amount of intellectual terrain in a relatively small amount of space, making it a book that people might both buy and carry around. It could very well become the "Key Words" of the drug field. (Ric Curtis)

'This is a great resource that reflects the huge expertise of the authors. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and indeed anyone wanting critical but comprehensive coverage of key issues and trends concerning drugs and society - locally and globally, historically and today.'
- Nigel South, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex

'Provides informative, balanced and contextualized insights into the relationships between people and drugs. Whatever your background and however knowledgeable you feel you are about contemporary drug issues, I guarantee that you will learn something unexpected and new from this valuable text.'
- Joanne Neale, Professor of Public Health, Oxford Brookes University

Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their involvement in drug use? Insightful and illuminating, this book discusses drugs in social contexts. The authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions.

This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as drug service practitioners such as drug workers, social workers and specialist nurses.