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Constructing the Pharmacological: A Century in Review*
1. Introduction
The 20th century revealed the extent to which "drugs" are socially produced with greater drama than any previous era, yet this was also a century in which the public understanding of drugs was eclipsed by an ideology of angels and demons.
Ours has remained a culture in which the unfolding story for any particular drug is paved not by its chemical structure or pharmacological action, as is believed, but by its own social history - of how it is used, the contexts in which it is used, and the kinds of people who use it. Consider: In 1972, the US Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs proposed greater restrictions on the prescription drugs known as the barbiturates (e.g., Seconal), as they "are more dangerous than heroin."1 In the 1990s, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed methylphenidate (Ritalin), a cocaine-like drug ingested by millions of American children each day, at the top of its list of controlled substances likely to be stolen from pharmacies and peddled on playgrounds. In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the prescribing of fentanyl (Sublimate), a synthetic form of heroin sold on the street as "China White," to children in the form of a lollipop.2
There seems to be something about producing mind-altering effects via an invisible agent that immediately calls the user and others to build an elaborate set of social regulations and rituals around drug use. There can be little doubt that both the uses of psychoactive substances and their associated effects have always been animated by the human practices in which these substances have been taken up and transformed into "drugs." There can be equally little doubt, moreover, that the sociocultural processes involved here have almost always been overlooked. In place of their understanding, drug uses and effects have been attributed instead to the assumed powers of the drugs themselves.
To wit: No more impressive ideological system emerged in the 20th century, with such a penetration of state power and private institutional force, than pharmacologicalism. By pharmacologicalism I mean that matrix of centralized powers and discursive practices whose evolved social function is to reinforce an essentialism of drugs, of angels and demons, and in doing so,...