One of the great strengths of the volume is its juxtaposition of the
normalization of drug use against historical moments of prohibition. For
instance, with films like Chappaqua (1966) and Easy Rider (1969), Boyd
maps important shifts in drug discourse, emphasizing the normalization
of recreational drug use apparent in the countercultural movements of
the 1960s, followed by a wave of backlash films that include The French
Connection (1970) and Panic in Needle Park (1971). She also introduces
the regulation of addiction through treatment models which emphasize
self-discipline and self-control as a mechanism of governance and
state building. Employing drug users and dealers as key foils to proper
citizenship, she argues that drug films historically have reaffirmed the
white heterosexual nuclear family as the building block of national identity.
Within this framework, Boyd points to several key conventions in
the representation of race, class and gender. For example, she demonstrates
how depictions of women’s drug use are consistently sexualized
and often bound up with notions of maternal unfitness. The relationship
of both gender and whiteness to images of drug use is epitomized in a
scene from Traffic where a white middle class girl’s addiction and sexual
corruption is depicted via a young black male drug dealer. Alongside
this limited ideological framework, Boyd emphasizes how controlled
use is rarely depicted and treatment, when invoked, is part of a mandatory
criminal justice/punishment matrix. She also contends that the addiction
as disease model, which is predominant in cinema, is limited by
its disregard for a confluence of social, political, cultural, and economic
factors which shape drug use.