Customer Reviews

HEP CATS, NARCS, AND PIPE DREAMS: A History of America's Romance with Illegal Drugs

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This book is a great read if you want to know about the interesting history of drugs in the United States. However, Ms. Jonnes provides "answers" at the end of her book that are not consistent with the material she previously exposed. For example, she says that one solution is to stigmatize drugs; yet in the sixties the older generation was wholly antidrug and that did not stop the counterculture from using them. She also does not seem to want to acknowledge that alcohol use is another important part of the drug epidemic (even if it is now legal, remember Prohibition days), indeed, most people start with alcohol as a pathway to illegal drugs, not with marijuana. Also, she wholly refuses to accept that there could actually be people who use illegal drugs in a recreational way and that this does not affect their lives, work or relationships, something I find disturbing because in reality this is quite common. So, all in all, read this book for its greatly researched and detailed history but form your own opinion about the current situation and how it should be handled.

It's frightening to consider that most of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for establishing illegal drug policy in America will have never read Jill Jonnes' book. Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams should be mandatory reading for all such people, not necessarily because of the conclusions she reaches--there tends to be dispute in these--but because of the incredible wealth of historical information she has packed in it.

One surprise for the average reader of Hep-Cats is the rich history of illicit drug use in America. Drug use connotes Timothy Leary and the turbulent sixties, or the more recent crack cocaine epidemic. But in reality, numerous waves of drug abuse-illegal and otherwise--have swept the country, each with their own unique origins, consequences, and solutions. One of the benefits of studying history, is the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and avoid repeating them. It appears that America has been repeating its errors in using and controlling drugs for centuries. We're a liberal, open-minded society of fun-loving risk-takers. We delude ourselves into believing the latest and greatest drug has no consequences, or that we're at least of strong enough character to master it. The inevitable result is the vicious cycle of addiction (or dependency), crime, finger pointing, and policy experimentation.

Does the answer lie in prevention, treatment, education, law enforcement, stricter sentencing, or all of the above? We don't always agree, but Hep-Cats provides a thorough and accurate background, a wonderful educational foundation on which policymakers could base decisions and hopefully control arguably the single largest contributor to crime in America: drug abuse. But this is no textbook. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully constructed, and very well-written, Hep-Cats is an entertaining read for all. -Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Jonnes does an excellent job of recounting the history of illegal drugs in American society. But her own data contradicts her policy recommendations.

For example, she strongly supports an enlarged federal war on drugs because she says legalization failed.

Yet by her own figures, there is a higher % of the population now who are cocaine and opiate addicts,
than in 1900 when it was legal. Her figures: 0.96% mid 1990's, 0.46% 1900.

Jonnes refuses to consider Alcohol a drug problem, and hides from her own data that most cocaine users never become a problem to society in any way.

Read the history, but don't let the author tell you what this history means for the future. Jonnes seems unable to extend her own trend lines.

Jonnes does a good job of chronicling America's history with drugs and drug use. She provides great detail in where drugs were and how they got there. However, her approached is biased and clouded by anti-drug inferences and conclusions throughout. After reading the second page, I knew exactly where her argument was headed. This might be fine for an opinion piece, but she presents this work as historical. It clearly is much more than that.
Jonnes also focuses on opiates as the standard for drug use, giving only passing references to marijuana, yet concluding that marijuana falls into the same category amid considerations of legalization or decriminalization. She makes some erroneous claims, like her implications that once you try opiates you'll be hooked soon after, very much a reefer-madness approach. She only casually alludes to Anslinger's corruption. She also only uses those studies that support her position, completely ignoring studies that have at least equal, and sometimes more, scientific soundness and validity. She never even mentions the government studies by Laguardia in 1944, or Schaffer in 1972, for example. But had she done that, it would have conflicted with her completely biased view. She even goes so far as to imply that Nixon eased drug penalties and presents him as a common-sensical figure in this, completely ignoring his demand that marijuana be classified as a schedule 1 narcotic, which it isn't (it's not even a narcotic, and it certainly doesn't fit the critera of schedule 1).
Unfortunately, this book is like much of anti-drug works - political in nature and deceptive in detail.

Until you read this book, you don't realize how much we haven't been told about how drugs entered center stage in American life. This history is fascinating and filled with weird, colorful and larger-than-life people and deeply strange but true anecdotes, such as the CIA's experiments with LSD. Jonnes has done amazing research and opened up an entire hidden world.

So many of our lives have been touched by drugs, and yet we have had no information to explain how this came to be. Jonnes has done a phenomenal job of explaining how drugs overtook America and why.

I have read this book over and over..... It is very informative on Americas wonder of drugs from early days to the present....I have to say... I was more in to the first chapters of this book( late 1800's to the early 40's).... Intresting pictures as well

The whole family read this book after being enticed by the title. A must read for anyone developing an opinion on drug use, abuse, misuse, or legislation in the US. After reading just a few chapters, each of us felt compelled to tell others about the book and the reasons for the drug problems in America.

It is too long in spots, but these are easy to skip.

If you are a student of medicine, politics, ethics, or law, this book is an excellent resource.

Jonnes randomly mixes a wealth of facts with a large body of rumor and innuendo without ever asking how to separate the two. I was particularly struck by her suggestion that cocaine-induced rampages by African American men in the South led to one police department's decision to upgrade their weapons, with a citation to Musto's more accurate history in the endnote. Musto notes that fear of cocaine was generated and sustained by wild rumors, racism, and reports of coked-up minorities raping white women and able to withstand .32 caliber bullets, leading one force to actually switch to .38s in order to effectively kill black drug users.

Jill Jonnes worked as a journalist for many years before she got herself a Ph.D. in history, and reading through Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams it soon becomes apparent that she has let both her journalistic and historic expertise shine through. The book is incredibly thorough, informative, and revealing, and the enormous amount of sources cited is a dream come true for anyone who wants to explore the topic on his or her own, or simply make a check-up on her claims.

The book deals with - just like the subtitle says - the drug history of America, what substances have been legal and illegal throughout different eras, how the use and abuse have come and gone, what criminal (or legal) groups it was that distributed the drugs, how the public reacted to it all, and much, much more. Not rarely it's easy to be upset and/or surprised when one, for instance, learns of how widely available cocaine was at the beginning of the 20th century, or partakes in all those tragic fates that came to symbolize the traditional abuser after the crack epidemic swept across the country as the logical follow-up to the naïve cocaine extravaganza present throughout the 1980s.

It is, however, revelations about widespread corruption within different state and federal agencies along with revolting hypocrisy in American foreign politics that really grabs the reader's attention. One of many examples:

"The tragic truth is that the United States government covertly played a crucial role in strengthening the very organizations that fed the postwar drug plague, a plague that began on the streets of Harlem and other northern ghettoes, and spread eventually throughout the country." (pg.166)

In other words; from time to time the alleged good guys were (and still is?) just as wicked as the bad guys and organizations they say they're after.

"The United States, which historically had been implacably opposed to anything that promoted nonmedical drug use, had started to turn a blind eye to certain trafficking activities if they involved those friendly to our cause in the Cold War." (pg.175)

However, not everything is pleasing with Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams. Because, Jonnes has - and this is very surprising considering not only her historical training but also the way the rest of the book looks - a view of the relationship between humans and drugs that is nothing but shockingly narrow-minded and outright offensive. Not only does she refuse labelling alcohol as a drug and apparently thinks it's cute and charming when someone has a drink or two as a means of relaxing after a hard day's work; she also apparently believes that all drugs are always harmful for all people under all circumstances.

Because of this, she finds it tremendously easy to come up with such bizarre ideas as: "The reality was that few people were likely to have their lives dramatically changed for the better or even notably enhanced by getting high." (pg.260) Abuse is equalled with abuse, the many positive effects of drugs in different circumstances are completely ignored, and the user is portrayed as an utter lunatic without any sorts of control over neither his thoughts nor his body.

And if this denial of the benevolent aspect of drug use isn't enough, she also has the guts to claim that usage is unnatural, by first saying that: "A rising chorus among the nation's youthful educated and elite argued that using drugs to achieve altered states was a natural - even desirable - experience." (pg.312), and then basically ridicules every single drug user in the history of mankind.

Apparently Jonnes believes that using different kinds of stimulants is a new invention, with no function whatsoever and with solely negative effects on everything and everyone. Even someone with only a meager knowledge of history is likely to know this isn't so, that people in all civilizations throughout the entire history of the human race have used different stimulants, both in religious and social contexts. What's "unnatural" about drugs is the drug trade itself, its politics, the artificial drugs developed in laboratories, and whatever restrictions the politics of narcotic substances has resulted in.

We all know that drugs and drug use have caused tremendous pain and insane amounts of casualties over the years. Denying something like that would be the definition of stupidity. But that's not the point; the point is that the scenario put forth by Jonnes is almost ridiculous in its absurd naivety:

"Nothing better epitomizes instant gratification and its dangers than the drug culture. Obviously, one of the great attractions of marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin is that they instantly loosen or dissolve ordinary inhibitions and restraints. The immediately put users in an 'altered state,' oftentimes pleasurable. People under the influence of these drugs become notably less responsible and do things against their better judgment. And focused as drug users are on the personal pleasure of using drugs, they certainly have no thought for 'collective well-being.' (pg.415)

So in the end, her book becomes just an average piece of work. Sure, she has lots of interesting things to say and is highly skilled doing so, but her unbelievably unrealistic approach to actual drug use comes very close to spoiling her entire effort.