Heroin first saw the light of day a century and a quarter ago in a laboratory in Paddington Station, London. Since then it has spread across most parts of the world in fits and starts, temporarily held up here or blocked there, but pushing on with a persistence that has eventually overcome all obstacles. Despite the reach of heroin, the information on which public debate about heroin is based is quite often wrong.
Tom Carnwath and Ian Smith have written The Heroin Century to set the record straight. Their fascinating account of the development and use of this twentieth-century drug provides a wealth of factual information alongside some informed insights into the future for heroin in the twenty-first century. Topics include: methods of heroin production and distribution; types of heroin and methods of consumption; government attempts to control the spread of heroin; patterns of heroin use; heroin and its relationship to creativity; physiological and medicinal effects of heroin; the relationshipbetween heroin and crime; and treatments for heroin use.