Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Social Construction of Drug and Alcohol Problems -- Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State / Joseph R. Gusfield -- Deviant Drinking as Disease: Alcoholism as a Social Accomplishment / Joseph W. Schneider -- Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts: Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media / James D. Orcutt, J. Blake Turner -- Political and Ideological Contexts -- Comparative Ideologies and Alcoholism: The Protestant and Proletarian Ethics / Timothy P. Rouse, Prabha N. Unnithan -- Setting the Public Agenda: "Street Crime" and Drug Use in American Politics / Katherine Beckett -- Truth and DARE: Tracking Drug Education to Graduation and as Symbolic Politics / Earl Wysong, Richard Aniskiewicz, David Wright -- Social Patterns: Epidemiological Research -- Explaining Racial/Ethnic Differences in Adolescent Drug Use: The Impact of Background and Lifestyle / John M. Wallace, Jr., Jerald G. Bachman -- Drinking by Black and White Women: Results from a National Survey / Denise Herd -- Race, Class, and Gender Differences in Substance Abuse: Evidence of Middle-Class/Underclass Polarization among Black Males / Kellie E. M. Barr, Michael P. Farrell, Grace M. Barnes, John W. Welte -- Social Worlds: Qualitative Research -- You Can't Help but Get Stoned: Notes on the Social Organization of Marijuana Smoking / Don H. Zimmerman, D. Lawrence Wieder -- Shifts and Oscillations in Deviant Careers: The Case of Upper-Level Drug Dealers and Smugglers / Patricia A. Adler, Peter Adler -- Links to Other Social Problems -- The "Drunken Bum" Theory of Wife Beating / Glenda Kaufman Kantor, Murray A. Straus -- Drugs-Crime Connections: Elaborations from the Life Histories of Hard-Core Heroin Addicts / Charles E. Faupel, Carl B. Klockars -- Social Misery and the Sanctions of Substance Abuse: Confronting HIV Risk Among Homeless Heroin Addicts in San Francisco / Philippe Bourgois, Mark Lettiere, James Quesada.

The 14 clearly written articles included in this collection exemplify the best of sociological scholarship on drug and alcohol problems. The readings strike a balance between constructionist, epidemiological, and ethnographic approaches to the study of drinking, drug use, and related problems such as domestic violence, crime, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Visit our website for sample chapters!