Smack in the City

Smack: Heroin and the American City is an urban history of heroin.  But author Eric C. Schneider is interested in more than just narcotics; he recreates the environments which have shaped heroin use in America to demonstrate the importance of the “social setting” in understanding drug abuse.  Complaining that too often the city is seen as “only a backdrop against which events occurred, rather than a primary shaper of those events,” Schneider highlights what he describes as “the spatial dimension of heroin use,” to illustrate the relationship between social groups, in this case drug-using subcultures, and the physical spaces that harbor them.  Schneider believes that understanding the link between drug use and social setting is the key to any successful policy response.