Altered states: opium and tobacco compared.

Abstract

Successive media commentators on British drug policy who have come across my research on nineteenth-century, opiate use have found it fascinating a society now has quite restrictive policies toward drugs once had no policies at all. Drug use was endemic at all levels of society, and opium was as common as aspirin today. We do indeed now have altered states so far as drug control is concerned (Berridge, 1999). Recalling time is interesting, but there are more important things to do with history than simply a fancy that response. In recent years, historians and political scientists have used various forms of study to examine the issues drive policy change and the relationships between science and policy. Here I can cite by way of example work coordinated by Ron Bayer and David Kirp on cross-national AIDS policy development (Kirp and Bayer, 1992), and Sheila Jasanoff on the science-policy interface and its cross-national differentiation (Jasanoff, 1990). Connie Nathanson, with her work comparing smoking and gun control in the United States, has drawn a different kind of comparison across very different policy areas in the same country (Nathanson, 1999). These styles of work are relevant to key questions history can help to address. This is where my definition of altered states comes in. For some, it can mean the consciousness-expanding, perception-altering qualities of drug use. These qualities are important; we would not be debating drug use if drugs of various

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