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Heroin is an illustrated history of Canadian heroin regulation over two centuries. Susan Boyd points to our failure to address the overdose death epidemic caused by criminalizing drug users and to the decades of resistance to harm-reduction policies. Heroin, discovered in 1898, was heralded as an important medicine and successfully marketed as a pain reliever and cough suppressant. Until the early 1950s, heroin was prescribed for therapeutic use in Canada. Yet, illegal heroin use became the focus of drug prohibition advocates and law enforcement, who painted it as highly addictive and destructive. Systemic racism was the impetus for our first anti-heroin laws; the race, gender and class of users influenced drug control, which, by the 1930s, became the focus of law enforcement. Flawed ideas about heroin and people who use the drug have shaped drug law and policy for decades. This book is informed by documentary evidence and the experiences of people who use/used heroin, drug user unions and harm-reduction advocates. These sources highlight the structural violence of drug policy that uses prohibition and criminalization as the main response to drug use.
Susan C. Boyd is a scholar/activist and distinguished professor at the University of Victoria. She has authored several articles and books on drug issues, including Busted: An Illustrated History of Drug Prohibition in Canada. She was a member of the federal Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation. She is a long-time activist who collaborates with groups that advocate for the end of drug prohibition and for the establishment of diverse services.