Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine John Scarborough; 2. Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco coffee cocoa tea and distilled liquor sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Rudi Matthee; 3. Pharmacological experimentation with opium in the eighteenth century Andreas-Holger Maehle; 4. The regulation of the supply of drugs in Britain before 1868 S. W. F. Holloway; 5. Das Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office) and the chemical industry in Germany during the Second Empire: partners or adversaries? Erika Hickel; 6. From all-purpose anodyne to marker of deviance: physicians' attitudes towards opiates in the United States of America from 1890 to 1940 Caroline Jean Acker; 7 Changes in alcohol use among Navajos and other Indians of the American Southwest Stephen J. Kunitz and Jerrold E. Levy; 8. The drug habit: the association of the word 'drug' with abuse in American history John Parascandola; 9. Research and development in the UK pharmaceutical industry from the nineteenth century to the 1960s Judy Slinn; 10. AIDS drugs and history Virginia Berridge; 11. Anomalies and mysteries: the 'War on Drugs' Ann Dally.