Introduction
The First Crisis 1 Drug wars and white markets
2 “Legitimate addicts” in the first drug war
3 Preventing blockbuster opioids
The Second Crisis 4 Opioids out, barbiturates in
5 A new crisis and a new response
6 White markets, under control
The Third Crisis 7 White market apocalypse
Conclusion: Learning from the past
Appendix: White market sales and overdose rates, 1870–2015
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Wall Street Journal
“At the start of White Market Drugs, Herzberg laments that ‘pharmaceutical opioids do not yet have their historian.’ They do now. He has presented a careful and comprehensive chronicle spanning more than a century.”
New Republic
“In the style of a classic work of alternative history, Herzberg’s White Markets reminds us that over the last 150 years, pharmaceutical boom and bust cycles have continually hit small towns and communities across America.”
Dissent
“White Market Drugs examin[es] the troubled history of psychoactive drugs in America. Herzberg considers licit and illicit drugs together, arguing that the marketing of medicine relies on the stigmatization and criminalization of those who consume drugs outside the medical system; the development of America’s gargantuan pharmaceutical markets must be understood alongside the growth of the illicit drug market. His choice of the phrase ‘white market’ to describe pharmaceuticals reflects the racial bias that has been baked into this system from the start.”
Publishers Weekly
"Herzberg argues that the vast majority of American experiences with drugs and addiction have taken place within what he calls “white markets,” where legal drugs—i.e., medicine—are sold to a largely white clientele. He advocates for a consumer protection approach that regulates all drug markets while caring for people with addiction by ensuring they have safe, reliable access to medication-assisted treatment. Accomplishing this, Herzberg explains, would require rethinking a racially segregated drug/medicine divide."
David T. Courtwright, author of Dark Paradise and The Age of Addiction
“White Market Drugs provides essential backstory for a string of Pharma-stoked drug crises. Reading Herzberg, you can see the prescription opioid addiction epidemic coming from a mile away. This book is a powerful prequel to the body of investigative reporting on what now seems like the worst scandal in US medical history.”
Dominique Tobbell, author of Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and Its Consequences
“David Herzberg’s White Market Drugs is a fantastic book that tells the history of addictive pharmaceuticals in the United States since the late 19th century through the current ‘twin crises’ of opioid addiction and mass incarceration of racial minorities. It is the first book to provide a comprehensive history of addictive pharmaceuticals and show how imbricated that history is within the broader history of addiction, drug policy, and health care in America.”
Jeremy Greene, author of Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine
"In this sweeping analysis of a century of US drug policy, Herzberg asks why our clinical, carceral, public health, and police responses to addictive substances have hinged on the false dichotomy between dangerous drugs and legitimate pharmaceuticals—and shows how this distinction has always had more to do with the politics of respectability than any underlying principles of pharmacology. Meticulously researched and clearly written, White Market Drugs provides not only an indictment of the failures of the present but also a roadmap for reducing harm in the future: a must-read for all concerned with the human toll of America’s long and costly wars on drugs."
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