The drug war that has turned Juárez, Mexico, into a killing field that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 2008 captures headlines almost daily. But few accounts go all the way down to the streets to investigate the lives of individual drug users. One of those users, Scott Comar, survived years of heroin addiction and failed attempts at detox and finally cleaned up in 2003. Now a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso in the history department's borderlands doctoral program, Comar has written Border Junkies, a searingly honest account of his spiraling descent into heroin addiction, surrender, change, and recovery on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Border Junkies is the first book ever written about the lifestyle of active addiction on the streets of Juárez. Comar vividly describes living between the disparate Mexican and American cultures and among the fellow junkies, drug dealers, hookers, coyote smugglers, thieves, and killers who were his friends and neighbors in addiction—and the social workers, missionaries, shelter workers, and doctors who tried to help him escape. With the perspective of his anthropological training, he shows how homelessness, poverty, and addiction all fuel the use of narcotics and the rise in their consumption on the streets of Juárez and contribute to the societal decay of this Mexican urban landscape. Comar also offers significant insights into the U.S.-Mexico borderland's underground and peripheral economy and the ways in which the region's inhabitants adapt to the local economic terrain.

In a newly enlarged edition of this eye-opening book, David T. Courtwright offers an original interpretation of a puzzling chapter in American social and medical history: the dramatic change in the pattern of opiate addiction--from respectable upper-class matrons to lower-class urban males, often with a criminal record. Challenging the prevailing view that the shift resulted from harsh new laws, Courtwright shows that the crucial role was played by the medical rather than the legal profession.

Dark Paradise tells the story not only from the standpoint of legal and medical sources, but also from the perspective of addicts themselves. With the addition of a new introduction and two new chapters on heroin addiction and treatment since 1940, Courtwright has updated this compelling work of social history for the present crisis of the Drug War.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and heroin. This book explores the devastating impact that the drugs trade has had on the Afghan people.

Author David Macdonald has worked as a drugs advisor to the UN. Based on his extensive experience, this book breaks down the myths surrounding the cultivation and consumption of drugs, providing a detailed analysis of the history of drug use within the country. He examines the impact of over 25 years of continuous conflict, and shows how poverty and instability has led to an increase in drugs consumption. He also considers the recent rise in the use of pharmaceutical drugs, resulting in dangerous chemical cocktails and analyses the effect of Afghanistan's drug trade on neighbouring countries.