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Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance With Illegal Drugs
"Fascinating, well researched and finely honed... This is a must read."―Judge Peggy F. Hora, California Bench Once upon a time in America, morphine and cocaine were routinely sold in pharmacies, and "hop heads" gathered in shadowy basements to smoke opium. So begins Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams , Jill Jonnes's ground-breaking history of illegal drugs in America. Jonnes vividly traces our first turn-of-the-century drug epidemic, successfully quelled, and then follows the story into the postwar starting in the jazz world of the northern cities and moving through the "flower power" 1960s to the cocaine and crack explosion of the 1980s and 1990s.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 23, 2018
Very good if you don't mind 400 pages of tiny type about when Harry J. Anslinger picked his nose in June of 1947.
November 25, 2014
Despite shelving it on my "psychedelics" shelf, this book is actually more about hard drugs. I am going to give this one an extra star, more than it possibly deserves, simply because of the great detail it provides regarding the history of the DEA and its predecessor, the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics). Harry Anslinger must have a special shelf in Hell on which he is perched, beside J. Edgar Hoover and Dick Nixon. The absolute corruption attending Ansliger's tenure and legacy as head of FBN is astounding, and Ms. Jones documents it broadly and in detail: Agents who not only took bribes from informants and dealers but were engaged in the heroin trade themselves. Pure ignorance of the culpability of foreign governments of France and Vietnam, and collusion with America's most vaunted three-letter intelligence agency.
Much of this was kept from public scrutiny and more than likely it continued on after the establishment of the DEA and continues on even today. The sheer lack of true knowledge of addiction as a medical problem at least lives on in the high ranks of the DEA who are still in denial as to the medical efficacy of cannabis and are still equating it, like the buffoons they are, with heroin. The DEA are also responsible for the nation's current dilemma, of being basically the source of the entire "militarization of our cops" syndrome. Sure, 9-11 had about 11% to do with that but the DEA wears tall blame for the other 89%. Special police powers, ability to conduct wiretaps, no-knock raids, and the foreboding sense of a surveillance state overlooking all Americans' public and private behavior can ALL be lain at the foot of the DEA and the idiotic "war on drugs." The totalitarian police state that threatens our Republic can be directly traced to the "Just Say No" style of friendly fascism which Ms. Jonnes subscribes to. It is too bad Ms. Jonnes (at least at the time of having written this, twenty years ago, now) was still supremely uptight about ALL drugs. Her ignorance of some basic facts as to psychedelics (for example, citing the "peyote mushroom") is all too obvious. But that should take nothing away from the fact that this book is the first I have ever found which brings the truth to light about the lies and cover-ups and absolute fraud that were the real "accomplishments" of the Anslinger era. There should be a reasonable drug policy at the federal level in the USA - heaven knows, since we - as well as the rest of the world - are still recovering from the shade of Anslinger's deluded, devil-in-the-best-intentions wicked ghost.
While she is correct about hard drugs she still comes to a crashing thud when the subject of marijuana comes up. Indeed, this book primarily glosses over marijuana simply because the author lumps it in with the others, without real scrutiny- nor even an eighth of the detail she spends on heroin and cocaine. All too happy to read us out the horror stories of crack babies and thugs with guns, slingin' rocks, Ms. Jonnes tells us that "marijuana... could never garner a significant social movement." Well, it finally has, a majority of Americans would approve of both more valid medical research and application (the type that was always cracked down on by the FBN and continues to be cracked down on by the DEA) as well as legalizing its recreational use for responsible adults. It is precisely because the marijuana law is a bad law that there is as much disrespect out there for the many other laws which are, in fact, good ones. Any 12 year-old kid who's had a toke could tell you , it' plain true, they have lied to you. (As to how this is the most horrible thing you can do to yourself, etc).
How are you going to keep that kid from prematurely exercising his inborn curiosity? By teaching him there are times and places for such things, and he ought have patience to wait a few years and he'll be able to see those and find his way through them for himself. But the "significant social movement" Ms. Jonnes casually sloughed off because she most likely figured "stoners will always be too spaced out to make a significant cause out of it" has arrived. Books like this deserve to be what they are - instructive museum pieces for a mindset which rightly goes the way of the past century, and the page will be turned.
Much of this was kept from public scrutiny and more than likely it continued on after the establishment of the DEA and continues on even today. The sheer lack of true knowledge of addiction as a medical problem at least lives on in the high ranks of the DEA who are still in denial as to the medical efficacy of cannabis and are still equating it, like the buffoons they are, with heroin. The DEA are also responsible for the nation's current dilemma, of being basically the source of the entire "militarization of our cops" syndrome. Sure, 9-11 had about 11% to do with that but the DEA wears tall blame for the other 89%. Special police powers, ability to conduct wiretaps, no-knock raids, and the foreboding sense of a surveillance state overlooking all Americans' public and private behavior can ALL be lain at the foot of the DEA and the idiotic "war on drugs." The totalitarian police state that threatens our Republic can be directly traced to the "Just Say No" style of friendly fascism which Ms. Jonnes subscribes to. It is too bad Ms. Jonnes (at least at the time of having written this, twenty years ago, now) was still supremely uptight about ALL drugs. Her ignorance of some basic facts as to psychedelics (for example, citing the "peyote mushroom") is all too obvious. But that should take nothing away from the fact that this book is the first I have ever found which brings the truth to light about the lies and cover-ups and absolute fraud that were the real "accomplishments" of the Anslinger era. There should be a reasonable drug policy at the federal level in the USA - heaven knows, since we - as well as the rest of the world - are still recovering from the shade of Anslinger's deluded, devil-in-the-best-intentions wicked ghost.
While she is correct about hard drugs she still comes to a crashing thud when the subject of marijuana comes up. Indeed, this book primarily glosses over marijuana simply because the author lumps it in with the others, without real scrutiny- nor even an eighth of the detail she spends on heroin and cocaine. All too happy to read us out the horror stories of crack babies and thugs with guns, slingin' rocks, Ms. Jonnes tells us that "marijuana... could never garner a significant social movement." Well, it finally has, a majority of Americans would approve of both more valid medical research and application (the type that was always cracked down on by the FBN and continues to be cracked down on by the DEA) as well as legalizing its recreational use for responsible adults. It is precisely because the marijuana law is a bad law that there is as much disrespect out there for the many other laws which are, in fact, good ones. Any 12 year-old kid who's had a toke could tell you , it' plain true, they have lied to you. (As to how this is the most horrible thing you can do to yourself, etc).
How are you going to keep that kid from prematurely exercising his inborn curiosity? By teaching him there are times and places for such things, and he ought have patience to wait a few years and he'll be able to see those and find his way through them for himself. But the "significant social movement" Ms. Jonnes casually sloughed off because she most likely figured "stoners will always be too spaced out to make a significant cause out of it" has arrived. Books like this deserve to be what they are - instructive museum pieces for a mindset which rightly goes the way of the past century, and the page will be turned.
October 10, 2012
absorbing, yet judgmental
October 11, 2021
This is an excellent account of America's fascination with various drugs from the Gilded Age of the late 1800s to the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Since its publication in 1996 there has been new drugs for Americans to indulge in so this book feels a little dated especially since it ends on an optimistic note that Americans will conquer their addictions and that drugs will never be legalized. While this may be true of the hard drugs; such as cocaine, the opiates and new drugs such as Fentanyl and Oxycontin; it now is evident that marijuana is well on it's way to legalization in most of the United States.
May 27, 2020
Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance With Illegal Drugs by Jill Jonnes (Scribner 1996)(362.29) is a pretty well-informed history of the US's history of the illegal drug trade since 1860. The book has a thorough section of the post-1970's history of cocaine in America including the South America narcotraficantes and the crack explosion. Quite well researched. My rating: 6.5/10, finished 12/15/11.
May 8, 2008
A history of drug use in America that is eye-opening and sometimes surprising. I especially was interested in the very early history. Some great illustrations and photographs as well. I am a fan of off-the-wall or unusual history books--stuff you won't learn in school, and this book doesn't disappoint.
Want to read
April 6, 2010An incredible account of the history of drugs in America. The author doesn't leave anything out and yet, creates an engaging story that keeps the reader flipping through pages like it's a mystery novel. Never got the chance to finish it! I adored the portion that described the jazz scene, however.
Read
September 8, 2007Yes, this book is fascinating, but I am way sick of reading non-fiction. It's sucking my will to live!
April 12, 2008
Couldn't get through it. Seemed semi-informative, but definitely not the drug history I'd tell you to read. There was something I didn't like about it, but I can't remember what it was.
Read
October 2, 2015Easy-to-read history of drug use in America, with some scathing critique of the experimental Boomer generation.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews