IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001562436

The Drug Wave: Youth and the State in Hamburg, Germany, 1945--1975 (2001)

University of Texas at Austin
Crew, David F.
Meacham, Standish

Publication Date: 2001
Edition Details: Advisors: Crew, David F.; Meacham, Standish
Physical Details: 368 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

This dissertation examines the relationship between the advent of an international youth culture in the 1960s, the historically specific evolution of the illicit drug trade, and the West German state's response to new forms of youth consumption. I situate changes in drug consumption and the rise of a new market in illicit substances at the intersection of rising affluence in postwar Germany and global changes in production and distribution. But I also analyze the ways in which a specific set of illicit commodities became a focal point for larger debates in German society, such as the state's ability to both promote and control consumption, the rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state, as well as the role of foreign labor in West Germany. After an initial surge in drug consumption after World War II, drug use in Hamburg declined over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s. Yet in the mid-1960s, young people in Hamburg, as in much of the industrial West, began using drugs as a way to distance themselves from their parents' generation. In Germany, this was complicated by the National Socialist past, as youth sought to promote a reconstruction of the West German state based on expanded political democracy and a rejection of the "affluent society" and mass consumption. By the early 1970s, drug consumption was widespread among German youth, forcing German authorities to attempt to control youth consumption and devise new methods for dealing with drug addiction. The creation of new forms of control and treatment, which included harsher penalties for drug dealers and novel treatment initiatives for drug consumers, involved the state, private groups, and drug users. After the economic downturn in the wake of the OPEC crisis of 1973 and the emergence of a substantial heroin trade, authorities came to a new understanding of drug use, which focused on a "hard kernel" of problem drug users, while accepting "soft" drug use as an inevitable part of modern life.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 62 (2002): 3902. UMI order no. 3033588.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001562436/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Mold, Alex; Berridge, Virginia; (2010)
Voluntary Action and Illegal Drugs: Health and Society in Britain since the 1960s (/isis/citation/CBB001230921/)

Article Acker, Caroline Jean; (2010)
How Crack Found a Niche in the American Ghetto: The Historical Epidemiology of Drug-Related Harm (/isis/citation/CBB001036125/)

Article Sendziuk, Paul; (2007)
Harm Reduction and HIV-Prevention among Injecting Drug Users in Australia: An International Comparison (/isis/citation/CBB000900118/)

Article Kessel, Nils; (2013)
“Doriden von Ciba: Sleeping Pills, Pharmaceutical Marketing, and Thalidomide, 1955--1963 (/isis/citation/CBB001320754/)

Book Gilman, Sander L.; Zhou, Xun; (2004)
Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (/isis/citation/CBB000771254/)

Article Kessel, Nils; (2009)
Umstrittene Expertise. Der Beirat “Arzneimittel-sicherheit” in der bundesdeutschen Arzneimittel-regulierung, +1968--1976 (/isis/citation/CBB001220573/)

Article Kruse, Paul R.; (2010)
The Danish Pharmaceutical Industry: Preconditions and Establishment (/isis/citation/CBB001000204/)

Book Eugene Raikhel; (2016)
Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic (/isis/citation/CBB191149414/)

Article Balz, Viola; (2011)
Terra Incognita: An Historiographic Approach to the First Chlorpromazine Trials Using Patient Records of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Heidelberg (/isis/citation/CBB001232217/)

Article Jacobi, Eva Anne; (2010)
Das Schlafkrankheitsmedikament Germanin als Propaganda-instrument: Rezeption in Literatur und Film zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (/isis/citation/CBB001032259/)

Thesis Glenn, Jason Edwin; (2005)
Medicalizing Addictions, Criminalizing Addicts: Race, Politics and Profit inNarratives of Addiction (/isis/citation/CBB001561587/)

Article Dyck, Erika; (2006)
“Hitting Highs at Rock Bottom”: LSD Treatment for Alcoholism, 1950--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB000770625/)

Article Bennett, Cary; (2011)
Methadone Maintenance Treatment: Disciplining the “Addict” (/isis/citation/CBB001232068/)

Article Gomart, Emilie; (2002)
Methadone: Six Effects in Search of a Substance (/isis/citation/CBB000202858/)

Thesis Kuzmarov, Jeremy; (2006)
The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (/isis/citation/CBB001561697/)

Book Race, Kane; (2009)
Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs (/isis/citation/CBB001000214/)

Article Mold, Alex; (2004)
The “British System” of Heroin Addiction Treatment and the Opening of Drug Dependence Units, 1965--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB000770532/)

Thesis Moon, Nathan William; (2009)
The Amphetamine Years: A Study of the Medical Applications and Extramedical Consumption of Psychostimulant Drugs in the Postwar United States 1945--1980 (/isis/citation/CBB001561110/)

Article Stoff, Heiko; (2008)
Hexa-Sabbat: Fremdstoffe und Vitalstoffe, Experten und der kritische Verbraucher in der BRD der 1950er und 1960er Jahre (/isis/citation/CBB000930741/)

Article Malich, Lisa; (2012)
Vom Mittel der Familienplanung zum differenzierenden Lifestyle-Präparat (/isis/citation/CBB001420902/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}