The Principal Investigator aims to provide a fresh historical perspective on Americas often ambivalent and peculiar approach to drugs and alcohol, and to add to our understanding of current and past drug policy at a time when that policy is often criticized. Specifically, she offers a study of American public discourse about mood altering drugs since 1900, a discourse that has tended to describe such drugs as sinister and evil entities, and to predict that """"""""epidemics"""""""" of drug use will engulf the entire nation. This discourse is interesting because of the consistent use of certain stock themes--despite changes in medical and scientific knowledge and in levels of drug use--suggesting that the rhetoric appeals to basic cultural values and fears. In addition, legislators have used such rhetoric in policy debates, thus overlooking or dismissing more moderate policy options in favor a """"""""war"""""""" on drugs. In this study the Investigator will look at the rhetorical """"""""lineage"""""""" of this discourse first and foremost by providing a content analysis of popular periodicals and newspapers. She will then trace the lineage back to anti-alcohol campaigns, and demonstrate that both anti- drug and anti-alcohol rhetoric are similar to that used in various counter-subversive movements and in evangelical jeremiads. In this study the Investigator will suggest that campaigns against drugs and alcohol have functioned historically not only as public health or social reform efforts, but also as crusades against subversion which give voice to recurring anxieties inherent in American Protestant culture. In the final chapter she will show how """"""""stock"""""""" characterizations of drugs and users have entered into the legislative discourse about drug policy by examining Congressional drug control bills and hearings.
