Beware Euphoria

Download or read book Beware Euphoria written by George Fisher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Fisher seeks the moral roots of America's antidrug regime and challenges claims that early antidrug laws arose from racial animus. Those moral roots trace to early Christian sexual strictures, which later influenced Puritan condemnations of drunkenness, and ultimately shaped the early American drug war. Early laws against opium dens, cocaine, and cannabis rarely rose from racial strife, but sprang from the traditional moral censure of intoxication and perceived threats to respectable white women and youth. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.