This Handbook will be published in May 2026. The publisher page is here. You can also buy it from the usual online retailers. A podcast introducing the Handbook and featuring some of the chapter authors will be available here.
The Handbook was conceived, designed, written, edited and produced between 2023 and 2026. The vision was for a text featuring a diverse set of intellectual voices. It aims to provide the reader with a grounding in the fundamentals of the field. The emphasis is on social science, with a particular focus on historical, theoretical and disciplinary contributions to our understanding of what is one of the major global social challenges of our time.
As well as being a research resource, the Handbook has also been designed to be suitable for use as part of university courses. If you wish to adopt it as core reading for your course, you may be eligible for a free desk copy (details here).
Table of Contents
PART I INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction: Researching drugs and society 2
Toby Seddon
PART II KEY CONCEPTS
2 Drugs 12
Toby Seddon
3 Intoxication 22
Phil Withington
4 Addiction 33
Peder Clark and Oisín Wall
PART III HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
5 The long view: Surveying the use of plant-based psychoactives in
prehistoric societies 47
Elisa Guerra-Doce
6 Cannabis: A brief global historical biogeography 59
Chris Duvall
7 From opium to fentanyl: A global history 71
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
8 Cocaine’s variable past(s) 84
Paul Gootenberg
9 The origins and early evolution of the international drug control system:
1729-1967 95
John Collins
PART IV THEORETICAL AND DISCIPLINARY LENSES
10 Anthropology 109
Merrill Singer and J. Bryan Page
11 Economics 122
Jeffrey Miron and Pedro Aldighieri
12 Sociology 134
Karen Joe-Laidler and Kate Lowe
13 Psychology and neuroscience 151
Catharine Montgomery, Abigail K. Rose and Andrew J. Jones
14 Law and regulation 164
Toby Seddon
15 Science and technology studies 175
Nancy D. Campbell
16 Decolonial approaches to drugs and drug studies 190
Maziyar Ghiabi
PART V GLOBAL TRENDS AND PATTERNS
17 Global trends: Reviewing 25 years of the United Nations World Drug
Report 204
Toby Seddon
18 Drugs and crime: documenting, explaining, and intervening in the
relationship 215
Glenn D. Walters
19 Race, ethnicity and the global war on drugs 230
Anita Kalunta-Crumpton
20 Sex differences, gendering and drugs 242
Beth Glover Reed, Yun Chen and Lauren Whitmer
21 Poverty, inequality and drugs 258
Susanne MacGregor and Aileen O’Gorman
22 Africa: Drug Production, Drug Problems and the Legacies of Colonialism 274
Simon Howell, Clemence Rusenga, Gernot Klantschnig and Neil Carrier
PART VI CONTEMPORARY ISSUES, INNOVATIONS, AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
23 The online drug market spectrum 287
James Martin and Andrew Childs
24 A psychedelic renaissance: novel treatments for mental illnesses 298
David Nutt
25 Treatment, recovery and mutual aid: new directions 310
David Best, Satinder Jandu, Lisa Webster and Phil Hodgson
PART VII CONCLUSION
26 Research frontiers in the twenty-first century 323
Toby Seddon
Afterword 331
Toby Seddon
Toby Seddon 