*What are the interconnections between drug war politics, drug prevention, popular culture and drug consumption?

*What are the major contradictions, assumptions and silences within the moral arguments of drug policy makers and what are the implications for the viability of drugs policy?

*What drug images and drug related representations play a major role within the mainstream economy and how do we understand the processes of 'drug normalisation'?

This book critically examines the assumptions underlying drug prohibition and explores the contradictions of drug prevention policies. For the first time in this field, it combines a wide-ranging exploration of the global political and historical context with a detailed focus on youth culture, on the basis that young people are the primary target of drug prevention policies.

It provides a critical map of drugs, bringing together work on drugs as a source of political state repression and regulation of morality through medical discourse, work on drugs as cultural commodities in film, popular music, advertising and tourism, work on 'drug normalisation', subcultural deviance and the politics of drug education.

This clear and elightening text for sociology and applied social science courses argues for an holistic understanding of drugs in society, which can be a basis for a more coherent approach to drug control.