Humans have ingested drugs for at least 10,000 years. Alcohol was discovered and drunk during the Stone Age; its use predates the fashioning of metal instruments . Dozens of plants containing chemicals with mind-altering properties have been smoked, chewed, swallowed, and sniffed by members of societies all over the world. Coca leaves, containing about 1 percent cocaine, have been chewed by South American Indians for thousands of years, beginning even before Incan rule; statues dating from 300 b.c. display puffed-out cheeks, indicating a wad of coca in the mouth , and a grave in Peru dating from a.d. 500 reveals a record of the use of coca leaves . Smoking or inhaling the smoke of the marijuana plant is mentioned in texts from ancient India, China, Greece, Assyria, and Thebes . Indians living in Mexico have been chewing hallucinogenic mushrooms, containing psilocybin, in religious ceremonies since the time of the pre-Columbian Aztecs . The peyote cactus, containing the psychedelic drug mescaline, is eaten by members of a number of North American Indian tribes to achieve ecstatic visions; the practice has been incorporated into the Native American Church, which claims a quarter of a million members in the thousands of tribes, cultures, societies, and, nations around the world and throughout history, only a tiny handful of peoples have not routinely taken drugs to experience their effects. Drug-taking comes close to being a cultural universal.

Surely a phenomenon as common as drug use must be understood. Humans are biological, psychological, and social beings. Each aspect or dimension of our existence is approached and studied by a specific discipline or field. Just as the biochemist and the pharmacologist can tell us a great deal about drug use by studying it in a laboratory, the sociologist can likewise describe and explain drug-taking in more naturalistic, real-life social settings. Each perspective has a slightly different story to tell; each focuses on a different facet of the drug phenomenon. By piecing together the perspectives from the various disciplines that study drug use, we may be able to assemble an accurate overall view. It is to this goal that this book is dedicated.

Drugs are used today on a massive scale. In the United States, nearly 1.5 billion prescriptions for pharmaceutical substances are written each year (Pharmacy Times, April 1987). Over-the-counter preparations account for $10 billion a year in retail sales in this country. Roughly six adult Americans in ten drink alcoholic beverages more or less regularly; a third of the American population smokes cigarettes on a steady basis. Marijuana, the most popular illegal drug in this country, has been used by more than 60 million Americans; some 18 million smoked it once or more during the last month (NIDA, 1986). More than half of all high-school seniors in the nation have tried marijuana, and roughly half of this figure uses the drug regularly . Estimates of the value of the illegal drug trade at the retail level range well over $100 billion a year. If the illicit drug business were a single industry, it would rank very near the top of all corporations in the Fortune 500.