'Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge' Book Launch for Benjamin Fong
Event description
- Academic events
- Free
- Open to the public
Join us for a book launch event in two parts!
VIRTUAL EVENT
From 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. MST, Benjamin Fong will provide opening remarks on his new book, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge." During this virtual session, Fong will be joined by CWD Director Michael McQuarrie for further discussion.
You can register to attend the virtual event here: Webinar Registration
IN-PERSON EVENT
From 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. MST, Fong will continue the discussion of "Quick Fixes" in 135 West Hall on ASU's Tempe campus. Fong will be joined by discussants Jenny Brian and Alex Avina at the in-person session to explore the implications of his new book.
Copies of "Quick Fixes" will be available for purchase at the in-person event courtesy of Changing Hands Bookstore. You can also order a copy here, courtesy of Verso.
ABOUT: "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge"
Americans are stumbling through a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified “war” on drugs. How did we get here?
"Quick Fixes" blows away the pharmacological fog to take a sober look at how drugs have shaped American society. Though particularly acute in recent decades, the contradiction between America’s passionate love for and intense hatred of these substances has been one of its defining characteristics for over a century. Through nine chapters, each devoted to the modern history of a drug or class of drugs, Fong examines Americans’ fraught relationship with psychoactive substances. As society changes, it produces different forms of stress, isolation, and alienation. These changes, in turn, affect the development and spread of medications and narcotics among the populace.
By laying out the histories, functions, and experiences of our chemical comforts, the hope is to help answer that ever-perplexing question: What does it mean to be an American?
