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Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction. Toiling in the Vineyards -- 1. The Discourse of the Dope Menace -- 2. The World's Greatest Living Authority on Dope -- 3. On the Street and behind Enemy Lines -- 4. A Red-Blooded American Boy and True-Crime Action Hero -- 5. Constructing a Kingpin -- 6. The Drug War Goes Abroad -- 7. The Global Drug War -- 8. The Wheel Turns -- Conclusion. Waging Drug Wars -- Notes -- Archival Sources -- Index

The story of America's "War on Drugs" usually begins with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan. In Containing Addiction, Matthew R. Pembleton argues that its origins instead lie in the years following World War II, when the Federal Bureau of Narcotics - the country's first drug control agency, established in 1930 - began to depict drug control as a paramilitary conflict and sent agents abroad to disrupt the flow of drugs to American shores. U.S. policymakers had long viewed addiction and organized crime as profound domestic and transnational threats. Yet World War II presented new opportunities to implement drug control on a global scale. Skeptical of public health efforts to address demand, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics believed that reducing the global supply of drugs was the only way to contain the spread of addiction. In effect, America applied a foreign policy solution to a domestic social crisis, demonstrating how consistently policymakers have assumed that security at home can only be achieved through hegemony abroad. The result is a drug war that persists into the present day. -- from back cover

Drawing on declassified records of the little-known Federal Bureau of Narcotics, this article examines counternarcotics operations in postwar Istanbul in the context of the Cold War and its impact on U.S. officials' conceptions of national security. Ever-expanding drug control operations demonstrated the emergence of U.S. hegemonic impulses independent of the deepening conflict with the Soviet Union. The article challenges the view that U.S. policy on drug control during the early Cold War era existed primarily as an adjunct of the "deep state." Actual U.S. policies were shaped by a much more complex set of factors.

Frontmatter --Contents --Notes on Contributors --Introduction: The Political Landscapes of American Health, 1945-2020 --Part I: Geography, Community and American Health --Introduction --1 Health and Inequality in the Postwar Metropolis --2 Poverty, Health and Health Care in Rural Communities --3 The Politics of Immigration Meets the Politics of Health Care --4 Latinxs and the US Health Care System --5 American Indian Health: The Medicine Wheel versus the Iron Triangle --Part II: Critical Health Conditions: Debates and Histories --Introduction --6 The Politics of Polio Vaccination in Postwar America, 1950-60: Detractors and Defenders --7 Beyond the Cancer Wars --8 A System in Crisis: US Health Care Politics and the AIDS Epidemic --9 The Politics of 'Obesity': Medicalization, Stigmatization and Liberation of Fat Bodies --10 Revising Diagnoses, Reinventing Psychiatry: DSM and Major Depressive Disorder --Part III: The Politics of Children's Health --Introduction --11 US Children's Health Insurance: Policy Advocacy and Ideological Conflict --12 Autism and the Anti-Vaccine Movement --13 Diagnosing Deficit, Promising Enhancement: ADHD and Stimulants on Screen --14 On the Possibility of Affirmative Health Care for Transgender Children --15 Black Infant Mortality: Continuities, Contestations and Care --Part IV: The Institutional Matrix of Health Care --Introduction --16 The Regional and Racial Politics of Postwar Hospitals --17 Health Activism in the 1960s and the Community Health Center System --18 The Veterans Administration and PTSD: Challenges and Changes from Vietnam to Iraq --19 The Pharmaceutical Industry, Drug Regulation and US Health Services --20 The National Institutes of Health: Courting Congress, Creating a Research Infrastructure --Part V: The White House, Congress and Health Reform --Introduction --21 Left Out: Health Security and the American Welfare State, 1935-50 --22 Medicare and Medicaid after the Great Society: Containing Costs, Expanding Coverage --23 Mental Health, Stigma and Federal Reform in the 1970s and 1990s --24 The War on Drugs: Nixon, Reagan, Trump --25 Obamacare and Its Critics --Part VI: Justice, Ethics and American Health --Introduction --26 Roe v. Wade and the Cultural Politics of Abortion: The Shift from Rights to Health --27 Genetics, Health and the Making of America's Triracial Isolates, 1950-80 --28 The Rhetoric and Politics of American Ageism: Notes from a Pandemic --29 Towards a Structural Competency Framework for Addressing US Gun Violence --30 Mass Incarceration and Health Inequity in the United States --Part VII: Public Health and Global Health --Introduction --31 Occupational and Environmental Health in Twentieth-Century America --32 Environmental Health beyond the State: Thinking through the 1970s --33 Bioterrorism, Pandemic and the American Public --34 Health Internationalism in the US and Beyond --35 Pandemics and the Politics of Planetary Health --Bibliography --Index

Examines the diverse, and often conflicted, political status of health in the United States from World War II to Covid-19Explores the histories, cultures, policies and technologies of American health and medicine as they have developed over a 75-year periodBrings together 45 experts from the US, Canada and the UK working across the fields of medicine, health policy, political and social history, political science, environmental studies, law, and cultural studiesUses the lenses of class, poverty, race, gender, sexuality and locality to study the concepts, policies and lived realities of U.S. healthcare and medical treatmentExplores key controversies in American health, including global health and new technologiesBy emphasising the plurality of health experiences, and balancing national and transnational perspectives with the lived realities of diverse communities, this groundbreaking collection expands far beyond biomedical conceptions of health. Together, the contributors take a multi-layered view of the politics of US healthcare by examining it from historical, cultural, medical, sociological, legal, ethical and environmental perspectives. Chapters consider major health institutions and the federal policies that guide them; the intersection between health and social movements; the contours of health and illness with respect to race, gender, sexuality, age and region; and the US's often-conflicted role in global health governance