6. History of opium use and drug addiction in America:
- Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, David T. Courtwright, Harvard University Press, 2001. Considered America’s leading scholar on drug addiction, Courtwright writes in his chapter titled ‘A Trap Baited With Pleasure’ that addicted customers consume a “hugely disproportionate” share of any drug, and that any manufacturer who pleads ignorance of this fact is “a liar.”
- Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, David T. Courtwright, Harvard University Press, 2001. In chapter two Courtwright describes the abuses of the patent medicine industry that led to America’s addiction crisis, largely iatrogenic (i.e., the result of medical use) in cause, in the second half of the nineteenth century.
- The Great American Fraud: Collier’s Expose of the Patent Medicine Fraud, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Nostalgic American Research Foundation, Inc, 1978. Well-worth a look at this original piece of journalism to understand just how egregious were the tactics and abuses of the patent medicine industry, which silenced potential critics — the newspapers in which they advertised — and successfully resisted government regulation for many years.